Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 20 · 2026-10-15

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)

In the world many continents, primary and secondary schools remain closed for two or more than 2 months in the summer vactions. While, I believe both the perspectives have valid arguments.

On the one hand, long school Holidays offer children to relax after months of academic pressure. Students offen have to complete assigments, prepare for new session, prepare for exam and involved themselves in various school activites. Therefore, a long break allows them to recover mentally and physically. Moreover, children can spend quality of time with their family specially with grandparents, travel to different places and develop new interests outside the classroom. For example, students may use their summer holidays to learn swimming, improve their commnication skills.

On the other hand, short holidays may provide several adavantages. Firstly, the students can maintain a regular learning habits and are less likely to forget the acadmic syllabus. After long break childrens leave their habit of regular learning even start forgeting about their before teaching, lazyness in going school after long break. Secondly, extented break are more convient for the working parents whose not having their in-laws at home to take care of childrens from behiend their busy schuledes.

In conclusion, long school break are valuble because it provide students to relax from their busy academic, they have much time to spend with their loveones or family specially build their good bond with their grandpartents, also because off them them also learn new prospertive of life. However, shorter breaks can supports them consitent learning and reduce difficulties for working parents. In my opinion balanced school calendar with reasonably long and short break is most benefical arrangements.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

The response addresses both questions and gives a clear overall view: long holidays allow recovery and family time, while shorter breaks may support learning and help working parents. Relevant examples, such as learning to swim and spending time with grandparents, make the first argument more concrete. However, the two sides are not developed equally. The benefits of shorter holidays are stated more briefly, and the point about parents is difficult to follow because the explanation of childcare arrangements is unclear. The conclusion restates the main ideas and recommends a balanced calendar, but this position could be supported with a clearer reason for why that balance is preferable.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.5

The essay has a coherent overall arrangement: an introduction, separate paragraphs for the two perspectives, and a conclusion. The signposts “On the one hand,” “On the other hand,” and “In conclusion” make the progression easy to follow, and ideas within the first body paragraph generally move logically from rest to family time and new interests. This meets the lower-band expectations securely and shows some features of stronger organisation. However, cohesion is not consistently smooth: the sentence beginning “After long break” strings together several points without clear links, and the childcare argument is hard to connect to the claim about shorter holidays. Use clearer sentence boundaries and refer back to each main idea explicitly.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The vocabulary is sufficient to communicate the main ideas, with relevant terms such as “academic pressure,” “quality of time,” “regular learning habits,” and “working parents.” There are also attempts to use topic-specific language, but control is limited and noticeable spelling and word-choice errors sometimes make the reader pause. Examples include “vactions,” “commnication,” “acadmic syllabus,” and “valuble”; “prepare for new session” and “develop new interests” also need more natural phrasing. Repetition of “long break” and “students” limits flexibility. Build accuracy by checking spelling and learning common collocations, such as “take a break from academic demands” and “retain what they have learned.”

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The response attempts a mix of simple and more complex forms, including a contrast clause with “While” and a reason introduced by “because.” However, complex sentences are often not controlled successfully, and errors in agreement, articles, plurals, and sentence construction are frequent enough to affect clarity. For example, “long school break are valuble because it provide” has mismatched number and verb forms, while “shorter breaks can supports” uses an incorrect verb form. “While, I believe…” is also an incomplete opening clause, and “After long break childrens leave…” lacks clear sentence structure. Practise building accurate subject–verb patterns and checking each sentence for a complete main clause.

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