Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer
Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 20 · 2026-09-16
IELTS Writing Task 2 question
Many aspects of the way people dress today are influenced by global fashion trends.
How has global fashion become such a strong influence on people's lives? Do you think this is a positive or negative development?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Student answer (Band 5.5)
Nowadays, International fashion has such a great influence on individual's lives. Numerous people dress up according to the world's fashion trend. Everything has it's pros and cons. Fashion trends also good in some ways but on the other side there is some drawbacks as well. As far as I concern, people always follow the trend. They always influence by the people whom they watch on social media and different streaming apps.
From my perspective, fashion trends has a positive impact on people. You always try to meat fashion trend and it will give you a motivation to work hard. Additionally, they have a reason to utilize their money in better way. When you dress well, you have inner confidence in public areas. For instance, when I was in university I always preferred to dress well. It gave me a confidence to to interact with students of different departments.
On the other hand, fashion trends has also some negative impacts. Everyone could not afford the fashion trends. Fashion market spends a lot of money on advertisement and try to influence people to buy their product but their prices are too high and most of the people can't buy. So it could be hurt them. In middle class families, People work hard to earn their bread and butter, they don't have extra money to save to fulfill their fashion needs because prices are beyond their range.
To summarize, every coin has two sides but as far as I concern fashion trends has a better way to influence the people to dress well.
AI examiner evaluation
| Criterion | Band |
|---|---|
| Task Achievement / Task Response | 5.5 |
| Coherence and Cohesion | 5.5 |
| Lexical Resource | 5.0 |
| Grammatical Range and Accuracy | 5.0 |
| Overall | 5.5 |
Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.5
The response addresses both parts of the prompt, exploring reasons for the influence of global fashion (such as social media and streaming apps) and discussing whether this development is positive or negative. The position is clear throughout, and relevant ideas are presented, although some arguments remain somewhat under-developed and rely on generalisations rather than deep extension. For instance, the discussion on affordability in the third paragraph touches upon middle-class struggles, but it lacks specific examples or further elaboration. Nevertheless, all parts of the task are covered sufficiently, aligning well with the expectations of Band 6.
Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5
The essay presents a coherent overall arrangement with clear paragraphing, including an introduction, separate body paragraphs for positive and negative aspects, and a conclusion. However, cohesion is at times faulty and mechanical. The student relies on repetitive transitional phrases such as 'On the other hand' and 'To summarize', and some referencing is unclear, such as the pronoun shift in 'When you dress well, you have inner confidence...'. Paragraph transitions could be smoother to establish a more logical progression throughout the text. These features place the response firmly in Band 6.
Lexical Resource — Band 5.0
The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, attempting some less common items such as 'global fashion trends', 'motivation', and 'bread and butter'. However, there are noticeable word choice and collocation errors, such as 'fashion trends also good' instead of 'fashion trends are also good', 'meat fashion trend' instead of 'meet fashion trends', and 'it could be hurt them' instead of 'this can harm them'. Spelling is generally acceptable, but the lexical inaccuracies and limited control over word formation constrain the score to Band 5.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0
The response demonstrates a mix of simple and some complex sentence forms, such as 'When you dress well, you have inner confidence in public areas.' However, there are frequent grammatical errors throughout the text, including subject-verb agreement issues ('fashion trends has also some negative impacts'), missing articles ('in middle class families'), and punctuation errors like comma splices. Errors in tense consistency and basic structures are also evident. While communication is not severely impeded, the frequency of errors prevents the writing from reaching Band 6.
See this exact question answered at other band scores — the same prompt compared across bands.
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