Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 20 · 2026-10-04

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)

Across many countries, grade schools and elementary schools remain closed for more than two months of a duration in summer vacations. Their agenda is basically to save students from excessive heat. Although, many people complains and ask for shorter vacations for educational purposes.

Many schools prefered to give holidays for about two months and sometime more than that for the intention of students health. In most of the countries like in Asia where weather in summers become unbearable, educational authories took measures to allow children to stay at home for the specific period of time. This controlled duration of holidays was implemented by the authorities to prevent kids from excessive warm weather as heat stroke became very common during that time of the year. Therefore, along with providing education being responsible for the children's health is also institution's duty. Moreover, it is also beneficial for government as less resources of government were being used. For instance, decrease in electricity usage all over the country as no schools remained open for a long duration. Also decline in petrol comsumption cannot be neglected as their is no pick and drop services for students on daily basis.

However, many people argue to concise the number of vacations for students. They believe that longer vacations results in making students more lazy. While being untouched with structured educational environment for a long time can make students weak in their academics.

In conclusion, while many people wants vacations to get shorter it is also compulsory to consider health effect on children if they have to go to school in heat.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses all parts of the task by discussing both the value of long school holidays and the arguments for shorter ones, though the development remains somewhat limited and partial. For instance, the explanation of the value of long holidays focuses heavily on heat and health protection alongside secondary mentions of resource saving, but ideas like student laziness and academic weakness under shorter holidays are under-developed and lack extended support. The student's position is discernible throughout the response, yet the overall treatment of the prompts leans toward generalisations rather than fully fleshed-out arguments, which keeps the task response at this level. To move further, the writer needs to expand on each main point with deeper explanations and more specific, well-reasoned examples.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

There is a coherent overall arrangement to the essay, allowing the reader to follow the writer's general line of thought from the introduction through the body paragraphs to the conclusion. Paragraphing is utilised to separate the distinct prompts of the task, with body paragraph one addressing the value of holidays and body paragraph two covering the arguments for shorter breaks. However, cohesion is at times mechanical or faulty. For example, transitional phrases like 'Although, many people complains' and 'For instance' are used awkwardly, and referencing is occasionally unclear, such as the pronoun 'their' instead of 'there' in the second body paragraph. To improve Coherence and Cohesion, the writer should employ a wider and more natural range of cohesive devices and ensure smoother logical transitions between sentences.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The student displays an adequate vocabulary range for the task, successfully communicating central ideas about summer holidays, heat stroke, and government resources. Attempts are made to use less common vocabulary, such as 'unbearable', 'authorities', and 'educational environment', but these are accompanied by noticeable errors in word choice, collocation, and spelling. Examples include 'concise' used as a verb instead of 'shorten' or 'condense', 'comsumption' instead of 'consumption', and 'there is' misspelled as 'their is'. These lexical inaccuracies and spelling slips do not severely impede communication, but they restrict the score. To achieve a higher band, the student should expand their range of less common lexical items and refine their precision regarding word formation and spelling.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

The writing demonstrates a mix of simple and some complex sentence forms, attempting structures such as concessive clauses starting with 'Although' and relative clauses. However, there are frequent errors in grammar and punctuation that can cause some difficulty for the reader. Issues include subject-verb agreement errors like 'many people complains', awkward prepositional patterns and article usage such as 'for the intention of students health' and 'in summers', and tense inconsistencies. Furthermore, minor punctuation lapses occur throughout. To progress to a higher band, the writer must increase control over complex sentence structures and eliminate frequent grammatical slips regarding basic agreements, plurals, and verb forms.

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

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