Band 6.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.5 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-10-01

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

More and more people nowadays visit well-known places to take photographs of themselves, without looking at the place.

Why do you think this is happening?

Is it a positive or a negative trend?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Student answer (Band 6.5)

Many people these days visit popular places to take pictures of themselves, and fail to have a proper tour of the place, I think the reason is because people just want to gain social media likes and this is a negative trend.

There has been a sudden rise for social media popularity, people want their pictures and videos to gain up to a million likes, they want to be famous around the world, constantly searching for that one post that will make them go viral. This is the reason why they do not have the time and patience to enjoy beautiful places, they only go there for the ambience the environment will create for the pictures to go viral. This trend was common among young people, but recently even adults engage in this. For example, when people go for tours, they do not care to listen to the tour guide's speech about the history of the place, they just want to get good pictures that are social media worthy.

In addition, this results in a knowledge gap, the history or key details of places are not known because to them the spectacular view is more important. Also people do not have the time to enjoy nature, learn the culture of the places they visit and have quality time with family or their partners, there is no communication between people as everyone is concerned about the next story to share on their social medial pages.

In conclusion, the crave for social media validation and likes is the reason why people visit well-known places and focus on taking photographs of themselves without a proper view of the place, this is a negative trend because people do not get learn about the places and enjoy the moment.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 7.0

The response addresses all parts of the prompt by identifying the reasons behind taking photos at well-known places and clearly stating a position that this is a negative trend. The ideas are generally well extended and supported with relevant examples, such as tourists ignoring tour guides to get social media content. However, the development tends to over-generalise slightly in places, and some ideas could have been explored with greater depth to reach the highest levels. Overall, the task is answered satisfactorily, presenting a clear viewpoint from the introduction through to the conclusion.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.5

The essay presents a coherent overall arrangement with a clear logic that connects the main points from the causes to the negative consequences. Paragraphing is utilised, and the progression of ideas is fairly clear throughout the text. However, cohesion is sometimes faulty or mechanical, as seen in run-on sentences in the opening and closing paragraphs where commas are used improperly instead of full stops or conjunctions. Referencing and transitional markers could be managed more flexibly to ensure a smoother flow between sentences and paragraphs, fulfilling the criteria for a solid performance with some elements of higher bands.

Lexical Resource: Band 6.0

The writer uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully incorporating thematic phrases such as "social media validation," "knowledge gap," and "ambience." There are attempts to use less common lexical items, but some word choices and collocations contain inaccuracies, such as "sudden rise for social media popularity" instead of "rise in," or "crave for social media validation" instead of "craving." Spelling is generally accurate, and while these vocabulary errors exist, they do not impede communication, allowing the reader to easily follow the argument.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

The student demonstrates a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, attempting multi-clause structures to explain reasons and outcomes. However, there are notable grammatical issues, particularly run-on sentences and comma splices in the introductory and concluding paragraphs, such as connecting independent clauses with just a comma. There are also minor prepositional and article errors. These errors occur regularly and represent a mix of structures where control is inconsistent, meaning that while communication is rarely impeded, accuracy falls short of higher band thresholds.

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