Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · IELTS General Essentials · 2026-09-19

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

In many countries, people do not recycle their rubbish as much as they could.

Why do you think this is?

What can be done to change this?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Student answer (Band 5.5)

There is no doubt in that recycling is one of the major issue in some counteries around the Globe these days .some people argue that people do not recycle their garbage as much they should do because its very hard to decompose plastic.There are so meny reasons of this. In the following essay I will mention my point of view on this topic with some changes that we can make in society to resolve this issue.

it is hard to decompose plastic .it disturb our ecosystem when we burn plastic rather then recycle it and use it again. it relese some harmful gas which is not good for our Environment or for humen to inhale.This issue is getting worse these days .countries with the large population use more plastic because it is cheap and eassy to access.

To resolve this issue we all have to come on one table.To begin with ,Government should educate people.For example , there should be some education throught campain to educate people about proper use of recycle things mainly for rural population of the country. Furtheremore ,there should be a fine for those who throw anykind of garbage in public places it will create a fear between people.In addition ,Officials should give a notice to industries those who do anykind of plastic work if they do not have a proper process to recycle plastic they should be a fine for it .

To conclude ,I believe that, this issue is getting worse and we all should comeup with the balanced approach to takle this.

AI examiner evaluation

CriterionBand
Task Achievement / Task Response6.0
Coherence and Cohesion5.0
Lexical Resource5.0
Grammatical Range and Accuracy5.0
Overall5.5

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0

The response addresses both parts of the prompt, discussing reasons why people do not recycle as much as they could, such as the difficulty of decomposing plastic and countries with large populations using cheap plastic, and suggesting solutions like education and fines. A position is presented, although some ideas are underdeveloped and lack depth. For instance, the discussion on why it is hard to decompose plastic is repetitive and briefly mentions environmental impact without much elaboration. The ideas presented are generally relevant to the task, but they tend to over-generalise and could benefit from more specific, extended examples. Overall, the task is addressed adequately, fitting the criteria for Band 5.5 to 6.0, settling at Band 6.0 due to covering all parts of the prompt.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.0

The essay displays a coherent overall arrangement with clear paragraphing, separating the introduction, body points, and conclusion. However, cohesion is often faulty or mechanical. For example, transitional phrases like 'To begin with' and 'Furtheremore' are used, but the logical connection between sentences is sometimes disrupted by poor punctuation and missing spacing, such as 'it is hard to decompose plastic .it disturb our ecosystem'. Referencing is not always clear, and paragraphing could be better managed to group related ideas together. These issues place the response firmly in the Band 5.0 range, as the organization is visible but cohesive devices are inaccurate and punctuation errors frequently strain the reading flow.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.0

The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, attempting some less common items such as 'decompose', 'ecosystem', and 'industrial work'. However, there are numerous spelling, word-choice, and morphological errors throughout the text, including 'counteries' instead of countries, 'meny' instead of many, 'relese' instead of release, 'humen' instead of humans, 'eassy' instead of easy, 'campain' instead of campaign, and 'takle' instead of tackle. While these errors do not completely impede communication, their frequency prevents the score from rising higher. The lexical resource matches the Band 5.0 descriptors, showing a limited but minimally adequate range with noticeable errors causing some difficulty.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The student attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, such as 'In the following essay I will mention my point of view on this topic with some changes that we can make in society to resolve this issue.' However, control over grammar and punctuation is weak, with frequent errors including run-on sentences, missing capitalization at the beginning of sentences ('it is hard to decompose plastic .it disturb...'), and incorrect subject-verb agreement or word forms ('there should be a fine for it' vs 'they should be a fine'). These frequent errors can cause difficulty for the reader. The grammatical profile aligns best with Band 5.0, given the limited range of accurate structures and frequent mechanical errors.

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

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