Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · IELTS General Essentials · 2026-11-12

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Smoking can cause serious illnesses and should be made illegal.

To what extent do you agree?

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

Student answer (Band 5.5)

In this modern world every one is busy with their hectic schedule.There is an argument that smoking is causing serious impact on a person's life. Therefore, it should be made illegal. I am totally agreeing with the notion. This essay will discuss how harmful smoking is and why it should be banned.

Firstly, people always believe that smoking helps to reduce their stress. In this fast pace life person always feels himself behind and there is always a set deadline they need to complete. Doing so they feel exhausted and do smoking in their breaktime to make themselves comfortable and concentrated. Which causes serious health condition like cancer. For example, many workers do smoking in between their work breaks to overcome mental pressure which affects their lungs and causes cancer in long run. Therefore, smoking should be banned in every workplace and public areas.

Secondly, youth always pick up bad habits from their parents and watching movies. Children learns smoking by watching shows that their favourite actor smokes and looks cool. To illustrate, some parents smoke in front of their kids then that child will master smoking by seeing their guardian. Which creates bad impact on society. So, making vaping illegal will make better culture and stops affecting ones's health condition.

To conclude, children should always learn good habits from social medias and their parents. By watching them smoked they will study vaping which creates serious health issues like cancer. Moreover, cigarettes never help to reduce stress so making it illegal will save lot of lives which fosters an healthy environment.

AI examiner evaluation

CriterionBand
Task Achievement / Task Response5.5
Coherence and Cohesion5.5
Lexical Resource5.5
Grammatical Range and Accuracy5.0
Overall5.5

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

Your position is clear from the introduction: you agree that smoking should be illegal, and the essay gives two relevant reasons—health damage and children copying adults or celebrities. The examples about workers smoking during breaks and parents smoking in front of children help illustrate these points. However, the response only partly develops the question. The health argument focuses on cancer but does not explain why prohibition, rather than regulation or education, is the best solution. The second body paragraph shifts from smoking to vaping, which weakens its relevance, and the conclusion repeats ideas rather than drawing the argument together. Develop each reason with clearer explanation and address the implications of making smoking illegal.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The essay has a recognisable structure, with an introduction, two body paragraphs signalled by “Firstly” and “Secondly,” and a conclusion. This makes the main points easy to locate. However, progression within paragraphs is sometimes unclear, and several sentences are joined or introduced awkwardly. For example, “Doing so they feel exhausted…” does not clearly connect the deadline to smoking, while “Which causes serious health condition…” is a fragment rather than a complete continuation. The conclusion also introduces social media without developing that point earlier. Use complete sentences, make the relationship between each claim and its example explicit, and ensure the conclusion summarises the same argument developed in the body.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

You use enough topic-related vocabulary to communicate the main ideas, including “stress,” “health condition,” “lungs,” “cancer,” and “mental pressure.” There are also attempts at more specific expressions, such as “fast pace life” and “overcome mental pressure.” However, word choice and collocation are often inaccurate or repetitive, which makes some phrases less clear or natural. “Do smoking” is repeated where “smoke” is needed, and “master smoking” does not express the intended idea of learning the habit. The shift between “smoking,” “cigarettes,” and “vaping” also blurs the topic. Build a more precise range of vocabulary for health effects, addiction, and legal measures, and check that chosen phrases fit their context.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

You attempt both simple and more complex sentences, including clauses beginning with “Therefore” and “For example,” but control is inconsistent. Several sentence fragments occur, such as “Which causes serious health condition like cancer” and “Which creates bad impact on society.” There are also recurring errors in agreement and verb forms: “Children learns,” “their favourite actor smokes,” and “By watching them smoked.” Articles and sentence boundaries need attention as well, as in “in long run” and “schedule.There.” These errors sometimes make the relationships between ideas difficult to follow. Practise forming complete sentences with a clear subject and verb, then check agreement, tense, articles, and punctuation during revision.

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