Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-09-17

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)

Shopping habits are changing are day. More people choose to buy their local products rather than buying imported goods. I am going to discuss the reason why people choose local products rather than foreign good.

Starting with the reason why people shop goods products produces in their local area? First factor is price as production of the items occur in location so pricing of item excludes from transportaion charges and foreign duty taxes that is why these items are cheap as compare to imported items. Secondly, the customer service at local made products is unbeatable by foreign goods there gap of communication in between cosumer and the foreign companies. Moreover, the trust build with local companies is much better as compare to companies from other countries.

However still some people prefer to buy imported goods which are not available at local market. For example in country like India most of the products came from china such as electronic devices.

In my option the trend for shopping local products has a positive impact in their area. It increase the economic growth of the local manufacturer companies and create employement for their own people. Also it will encourage local industries to produce high quality products by making them economically strong. Moreover, national GDP growth scale will go higher and country becaome stable at global level due to the less use of reserve dollar that is spent while importing goods from different nations.

In conclusion, choosing local produced items over imported item is a good step for the growth of the locals and at national level.

AI examiner evaluation

CriterionBand
Task Achievement / Task Response6.0
Coherence and Cohesion5.5
Lexical Resource5.0
Grammatical Range and Accuracy5.0
Overall5.5

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0

The response addresses all parts of the prompt, discussing both the reasons for choosing local products and whether this trend is positive or negative. The introduction outlines the purpose of the essay, and body paragraphs present reasons such as pricing advantages without transportation charges and customs duty, superior customer service, and greater trust. The student also evaluates the trend as positive in the second half of the essay, citing economic growth, job creation, and strengthened national GDP. However, some ideas are slightly under-developed or briefly stated, and the explanation regarding imports from China feels a bit disjointed from the main argument. Overall, the content is relevant, meets the task requirements adequately, and maintains a clear position throughout, aligning well with the Band 6 descriptors.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5

The essay displays a logical overall arrangement with visible attempts to organize information into paragraphs. Progression is generally maintained through sequencing words and phrases such as 'Starting with the reason', 'First factor', 'Secondly', 'Moreover', and 'In conclusion'. However, cohesion is frequently mechanical and sometimes faulty. For example, the sentence structure within the second paragraph is quite disjointed, as seen in 'Starting with the reason why people shop goods products produces in their local area?', which reads more like a fragmented heading than an integrated topic sentence. Additionally, referencing and pronoun use can be confusing, such as 'the customer service at local made products' and 'there gap of communication'. Paragraphing is present, but internal cohesion requires smoother transitions to achieve a higher band score.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.0

The lexical resource is limited and adequate for the task, demonstrating an attempt to use less common vocabulary alongside noticeable errors. Words and phrases like 'transportaion charges', 'foreign duty taxes', 'cosumer', and 'employement' reveal spelling and morphological inaccuracies. The phrasing 'local made products' and 'trust build with local companies' lacks natural collocation. While the writer successfully communicates the core ideas about economics, trade, and consumer behavior, frequent word-choice and spelling errors restrict the lexical score. To progress, the student needs to focus on precise word forms, accurate spelling, and more natural collocations when discussing business and economic concepts.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The essay uses a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, but grammatical accuracy is quite inconsistent. There are frequent errors in basic sentence construction, subject-verb agreement, and prepositions throughout the text. Examples include 'Shopping habits are changing are day' (are instead of every), 'pricing of item excludes from transportaion charges', and 'country becaome stable at global level due to the less use of reserve dollar'. Complex structures are attempted—for instance, using relative clauses and conditional-like ideas—but they often contain structural errors, such as 'in country like India most of the products came from china'. Although communication is rarely completely blocked, the high frequency of grammatical slips places this response firmly in the Band 5 range.

See this exact question answered at other band scores — the same prompt compared across bands.

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