Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · IELTS General Essentials · 2026-08-10

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 contemporary society, contentious issues often spark debate and effect of smoking on health has no exception. People opine that Smoking could be harmful for the health that may lead to serious disease and government should have to take some initiative to ban smoking. I firmly believe that smoking is extremely dangerous for body which have detrimental impact on human health. In this essay, we analysed various causes of doing smoking with there effect on human body before elucidating the final stance.

There is a plethora of consequences of inhaling harmful smoke in the body. At the outset, immune system gets effected as this drugs such as cigrate do straightforwad attack on lungs by which people breath in difficult way. Additionally, taking drugs effects the standard of living because person waste money on this ilegal materials which may adverse the situation or conditions of household activities. For instance, if person take keen interest in this medicines then his ignorance for all other essential needs of home may shuffle the household system. Therefore, unauthorised medication would be banned by the higher authorities with proper enforcement of rules and regulations.

Furthermore, overtaking unlawful drugs enhance the criminal activities as a result of which there is detrimental effect on the societies environment as well.

For instance, drugees can do any illegal activities for taking this medication no matter what would be happening to his family and friends which creates fear in the minds. Additionally, natural environment also affected with this whiffs which may turn into the illness.

To conclude, undoubtedly smoking is not only lead to the serious illness for the human health but also enhance the crime in society and put adverse effects on nature also. For the sake of general public and whole community, unauthorised medicine should be banned by the government by implementing the policies in the country.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.5

The response addresses the prompt by taking a clear position that smoking should be banned. However, the development of ideas is inconsistent. The essay confuses 'smoking' with 'unauthorised medication' and 'drugs' throughout, which weakens the focus. While the prompt asks about smoking, the arguments regarding 'unauthorised medication' and 'criminal activities' are somewhat tangential and not fully relevant to the specific health and social impacts of tobacco. The position is clear, but the supporting arguments lack precision and logical connection to the specific topic of smoking.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0

The essay is organised into paragraphs, and there is an attempt to use cohesive devices such as 'At the outset', 'Additionally', and 'To conclude'. However, the flow is often mechanical and sometimes confusing due to the misuse of vocabulary. Referencing is occasionally unclear, particularly when the essay shifts between discussing smoking and general illegal drug use. The progression of ideas is hindered by the lack of logical clarity in the arguments presented, making the overall structure feel somewhat disjointed.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.0

The vocabulary is limited and often inaccurate. There is a persistent confusion between 'smoking' and 'unauthorised medication' or 'drugs', which significantly impacts the clarity of the argument. Words like 'cigrate' (spelling error), 'whiffs', and 'drugees' are used inappropriately or are non-standard. While the student attempts to use some academic-style vocabulary, the lack of precision in word choice and collocation often obscures the intended meaning. A wider range of precise, topic-specific vocabulary is needed to reach a higher band.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The essay contains a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, but errors are frequent and often impede communication. There are consistent issues with subject-verb agreement (e.g., 'immune system gets effected', 'smoking is not only lead to'), incorrect verb forms, and awkward phrasing ('doing smoking', 'take keen interest in this medicines'). Punctuation is generally functional, but the grammatical errors are pervasive enough to cause difficulty for the reader. More attention to basic sentence construction and grammatical accuracy is required.

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

Browse more IELTS Writing model answers or get your own writing scored by the same AI examiner.