Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 20 · 2026-10-05

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)

There are multiple aspects that state the value of long school holidays like physical well being is one of the major values of longer school holiday.The well-being of student should be the top priorties.On an average day for a student it is hard for him to focus of his health like exercise,sports and mental relief. Mental well being is an integral part of a students health.

Longer school holidays can porvide students with enough time to take part in extra-cricular activites, relief the pressure of studies, gives them enough time to spend their time with friends, parents and hobbies.

The weather is also one the huge deciding factor and an advocate for longer school holidays because the young students may suffer from dehidration, heatstroke etc while commuting to and from school so longer holidays mean that the hotter days will be spent at home in a saffer enviroment.

Now there can be some down side to longer school holidays.One of them is that the sudents sart to lose out on vital learning that can be great for their cognative devlopment.The school system teaches students discipline like getting up early, being early etc.Now it is impotant to maintain that discipline which is hard to do at home. These habits instill consistency which is usefull in late point of life.Now for some student there exsist no social life outside of school for them staying at home because of longer school holidays can cause the to be anti-social later on in life.For these reasons shorter school holidays are better.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

The response addresses all parts of the prompt by discussing both the value of long school holidays, such as physical well-being and escaping extreme weather, and the arguments for shorter breaks, including cognitive development and routine. However, some ideas are more fully developed than others. For example, the point about physical well-being is expanded with examples like exercise and sports, whereas the discussion on the weather and the negative impacts on social life remain somewhat limited and under-developed. Your position is generally clear throughout the essay, but to reach a higher level, every main idea needs to be fully extended and supported with robust explanations and specific examples rather than brief assertions.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

The essay presents a coherent overall arrangement where the main topics are separated into distinct paragraphs, looking first at the value of holidays and then at the counterarguments for shorter breaks. However, cohesion is sometimes faulty or mechanical. For instance, sentences like 'Now there can be some down side' rely heavily on conversational transition words such as 'Now' at the beginning of sentences, which disrupts the natural flow of academic writing. Additionally, referencing is not always clear, and paragraphing could be managed more effectively to group related ideas together smoothly. To improve further, you should use a wider variety of sophisticated cohesive devices naturally and ensure clear logical progression between sentences.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

You demonstrate an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, attempting less common terms such as 'cognitive development', 'dehydration', and 'anti-social'. However, there are noticeable spelling and word-choice errors throughout the text, including 'priorties', 'porvide', 'extra-cricular', 'dehidration', 'saffer', 'enviroment', 'sudents', 'sart', 'devlopment', 'impotant', 'usefull', 'late', and 'exsist'. While these errors do not severely impede communication, they restrict your lexical score. To move to a higher band, you need to expand your control of less common lexical items, ensure precise word choice and collocations, and eliminate spelling mistakes.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writing exhibits a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, demonstrating an attempt to construct multi-clause sentences. However, there are frequent errors in grammar and punctuation that can cause difficulty for the reader. Issues include problems with subject-verb agreement (e.g., 'the well-being of student should be', 'the young students may suffer'), missing articles (e.g., 'on an average day', 'in late point of life'), and incorrect prepositions or prepositional patterns (e.g., 'focus of his health', 'spend their time with friends, parents and hobbies'). Punctuation is also weak, particularly with missing spaces after periods and commas. To achieve a higher score, you need to demonstrate better control over complex sentence structures and significantly reduce basic grammatical errors.

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