Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-09-15

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Some consumers are increasingly choosing to buy goods that are produced in their local area, rather than imported goods.

What are the reasons for this?

Is this 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 5.5)

The locally produced organic goods have a rapid increase in it is demand. Recently, customers drastically moving to locally produced products rather than buying foreign products. The main reason is good quality of the local goods. Additionally, price increase in imported products changed customer buying patterns. Further, this trend made some countries to have a decrease in their income. However, as a whole this trend benefits the buyer and production companies. Therefore, I believe this is positive trend.

The market demand made some firms' to deliver products with less quality than previous years. Also, change in leaderships make organzations to change production strategies. Some of them were only focused on profits rather than quality. The consumers identified these and moved to local products even there are some drawbacks. The increase in trade taxes badly effected the product cost. Hence, this lowered consumers spending power. For an instance, USA decided to charge extra 50% on Canadian products. Canadian buyers started to avoid USA products, even the provicial mayors decided not to sell USA products on their territories.

The trend moved to other countries as well. Number of customers and celebrities promoted local products. This directly save the foreign reserves of the countries, especially developing countries. On the other hand, this act negatively effect to the countries who's main income comes from export. If their products were rejected by buyers, there product prices goes down. Although, there are negative effects, positive effects stands out. Hence, in my opinion choosing local products over foreign products is a positive trend.

In conclusion, recent market trends shows that buyers prefers to purchase products which are produced on their soil rather than buying foreign goods. Decrease in product quality and increase in product costs led this change. This behaviour has more benefits. Hence, this is a positive trend. However, in future this may be change to other way around.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0

The response addresses all parts of the task by discussing the reasons why consumers choose local goods, such as quality and price, and clearly establishes a position that this is a positive trend. Ideas are introduced throughout the essay, such as trade taxes and foreign reserves, but some of these arguments tend to be underdeveloped or slightly confused, particularly in the second paragraph regarding firm leadership and quality. Furthermore, the argument occasionally leaps between different concepts (such as trade taxes and celebrities) without full elaboration. Nevertheless, the main thrust of the prompt is covered adequately, earning a solid Band 6.0.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5

The essay is divided into four paragraphs, providing a recognizable overall structure with an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. However, cohesion is frequently faulty or mechanical. For instance, sentences like 'Additionally, price increase in imported products changed customer buying patterns. Further, this trend made some countries to have a decrease in their income' rely on repetitive and basic transitions. Referencing is occasionally unclear, such as in the phrase 'this act negatively effect to the countries', making the logical progression between sentences bumpy at times. Paragraphing is present, but internal cohesion requires better management for a higher band.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The student demonstrates an adequate vocabulary range for the task, attempting less common items such as 'organic goods', 'foreign reserves', and 'trade taxes'. However, there are noticeable word choice and collocation errors throughout the text, such as 'badly effected' instead of 'badly affected', 'provicial' instead of 'provincial', and 'there product prices goes down' instead of 'their product prices go down'. Spelling slips like 'organzations' also occur. These errors do not seriously impede communication, but they restrict the lexical score to a Band 5.5.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, but control over grammar is inconsistent. There are frequent grammatical errors, particularly with subject-verb agreement ('change in leaderships make organzations', 'recent market trends shows'), articles ('is positive trend'), and prepositions/verb patterns ('negatively effect to', 'this may be change to other way around'). While the meaning is generally clear despite these errors, the high frequency of basic grammatical inaccuracies prevents the response from reaching Band 6.0.

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