Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer
Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 20 · 2026-09-26
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)
Global influence has quite grown to influence people signifincantly in the recent years. Compared to the past, more people are now exposed to media due to the recent technological advancements. This impacts heavily on how people learn about fashion.
Due to the over-exposure of media in the recent days, more people get to know what is trending. So ultimately they are alway up to date. People are always coming up with new ideas and ways about how they can really express themselves. This always keeps people busy. Due to this diversification of creativity within people, new types of clothes are being invented. Ones which society never ever thought could be worn as a sort of clothing. Because of these global trends, clothings which would've looked alien to people in the past, are being normalised.
However, not everything is positive. There are also some negative aspecs of it. Due to the increase in trend of certain fashion styles, people often just end up wearing what is mostly shown in the media. This prevents society from finding out who they really are and what sort of clothing really suits them. If there wasn't any sort of trend ongoing, people would've gone to multiple places to try out many new different types of clothing and find out the specific types off clothing which really suits them and reflects their personality. Global fashion is prevents and will keep preventing upcoming generations from finding out what type of a person they really are.
In my opinion, I believe global fashion is influencing people to a more negative extent compared to the positive sides. I personally think people should focus more on expressing themselves and let people know their personalities rather than just following trends.
AI examiner evaluation
| Criterion | Band |
|---|---|
| Task Achievement / Task Response | 5.5 |
| Coherence and Cohesion | 5.5 |
| Lexical Resource | 5.5 |
| Grammatical Range and Accuracy | 5.5 |
| Overall | 5.5 |
Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5
The response addresses both parts of the prompt, exploring how global fashion has gained its strong influence through media and technology, and discussing whether this is a positive or negative development, concluding that it is largely negative. The position is clear throughout the essay. However, the development of ideas tends to be slightly repetitive and somewhat limited in depth. For instance, the discussion on how people express themselves and how clothing is normalised in the second paragraph could have been supported with more concrete examples. Similarly, the negative impacts regarding societal identity are stated rather than deeply explored. This performance aligns well with Band 6.0 descriptors, where all parts of the task are addressed, but some ideas remain somewhat under-developed or general.
Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5
The essay presents a coherent overall arrangement with clear paragraphing, dividing the introduction, body paragraphs addressing causes and negative effects, and the conclusion logically. However, cohesion at the sentence level is occasionally faulty or mechanical. The student relies heavily on basic connective phrases like 'Due to' repeatedly across consecutive sentences, as seen in 'Due to the over-exposure...' and 'Due to this diversification...'. Referencing is sometimes unclear, particularly with pronoun usage and sentence boundaries, such as the fragment 'Ones which society never ever thought could be worn as a sort of clothing.' Paragraphing is used sufficiently, but overall logical progression can feel somewhat disjointed, justifying a Band 6.0 score.
Lexical Resource: Band 5.5
The student demonstrates an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully attempting less common items and phrases such as 'technological advancements', 'diversification of creativity', and 'normalised'. However, there are noticeable spelling and word-choice errors, such as 'signifincantly' (significantly), 'aspecs' (aspects), 'clothings' (clothing - which is an uncountable noun), and 'Global fashion is prevents' (grammatical/lexical slip). The vocabulary used is sufficient to communicate the central message, but inaccuracies in word form and occasional spelling lapses prevent the text from achieving a higher band, placing it comfortably at Band 6.0.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5
The writing features a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, with attempts at relative clauses ('Ones which society never ever thought...') and conditional structures ('If there wasn't any sort of trend ongoing...'). However, there are frequent grammatical errors and punctuation issues throughout the text. Examples include spelling and typo errors like 'quite grown to influence', subject-verb agreement issues such as 'Global fashion is prevents', and non-standard noun forms like 'clothings'. While these errors do not completely impede communication, they occur frequently enough to prevent the response from reaching Band 7.0, making Band 6.0 the most accurate assessment.
See this exact question answered at other band scores. The same prompt compared across bands.
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