Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 20 · 2026-09-19

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

In many countries, primary and secondary schools close for two months or more in the summer holidays.

What is the value of long school holidays?

What are the arguments in favour of shorter school holidays?

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

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Nowadays, its common discussion among people about school holidays particularly long vacations for high and primary schools. For many people, it is not attractive option as they consider its a wastage of time. However, there are both pros and cons to deciding to do this. In this essay, I will discuss some of the reasons why the half of population have that opinion and benefits of long holidays in the further paragraphs.

Let's begin by looking the advantages of having long holidays in schools. One of the main positives of having days off from the school is that, it gives time students to having leisure time to pursue their hobbies, what I mean by this is that children will have more time to relax and this can make them active and make their mind fresh.

Turning to the other side of the argument, many of the people have that opinion that schools should not give longer holidays to the pupils as they indulge in useless activities such as spending times on internet, watching stuff online and playing online games which would make them sluggish and slacker. When they return to school they behave like stubborn.

All things considered, having longer holidays is not a bad option for me as students have right to give time to their hobbies and extra curricular activities which make them healthy ans strong but also parents should control their screen time.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.0

The student has addressed both parts of the prompt, discussing both the value of long school holidays and the arguments in favour of shorter ones. However, the ideas are somewhat limited and under-developed, particularly the body paragraphs which lack deeper exploration and concrete examples. Furthermore, the response falls short of the minimum word count requirement, containing only 236 words against the required 250 words. This under-length impacts the full development of the task and warrants a penalty under the Task Achievement criterion.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5

The essay displays a basic overall structure with an introduction, two body paragraphs, and a conclusion. However, paragraphing and logical progression are somewhat weak. The introduction features conversational filler ("Let's begin by looking...") and vague referencing ("why the half of population have that opinion"). Cohesive devices are sometimes mechanical or inaccurate, such as "Turning to the other side of the argument, many of the people have that opinion...", which affects the natural flow and readability of the text.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The vocabulary used is generally adequate for the task, but it tends to be repetitive and basic, featuring words like "wastage of time", "leisure time", and "useless activities". There are some noticeable lexical inaccuracies and unnatural phrasing, such as "its common discussion", "not attractive option", and describing children as acting "like stubborn" when returning to school. While communication is not severely impeded, the range remains limited and lacks sophisticated control.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.5

The student attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, but control is inconsistent. There are several grammatical errors and punctuation mistakes throughout the text, including missing apostrophes ("its common discussion", "its a wastage"), incorrect article usage ("the half of population"), and awkward phrasing like "gives time students to having leisure time". Additionally, run-on sentences appear, such as the second sentence of the first paragraph and the final conclusion sentence. Errors occasionally cause slight difficulty for the reader.

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

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