Band 6.0 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.0 · IELTS General Essentials · 2026-08-11

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 6.0)

Smoking is one of the major cause of serious diseases so It should be banned. I completely agree with this statement because smoking can cause the cancer among people, and non smoker also become the victim of this.

To commence with, the first reason is cigarettes contain lots of harmful materials that can cause of throat cancer. When people become addicted of taking cigarettes and inhale its smoke inside their body, it gradually harms their health. As a result, people have to suffer from throat cancer and treatment of this is not only expensive, but also impossible. For example, in Canada, the search has shown the data in the hospitals that the number of throat's cancer patient is increasing more than 10% each year due to smoking. Therefore, I believe that people life is crucial for country development so smoking should be illegal.

moving towards the another reason, smoking harms other family members. If a smoker smokes in the family, everyone has to inhale the smoke because all members seat together, either they watch the television or having conversation. This leads to have more health problems to those who are no-smoker. For example, In India, although one person smokes in family, he puts his children's life in trouble because they have to face serious illnesses in the future, such as lung cancer. However, I think that smoking should be restricted so that no-smoker can enjoy their life without any health problems related to smoking.

In conclusion, smoking not only makes a negative impact on health to those who smokes, but no-smoker also becomes victim of this. Therefore, this should be banned by the government.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0

The response addresses the prompt by taking a clear position that smoking should be illegal. The ideas are relevant, focusing on health risks to the smoker and the dangers of second-hand smoke. However, the development is somewhat limited. The examples provided, such as the reference to Canadian hospital data and the situation in India, are general and lack the depth required for a higher band. While the position is consistent throughout, the arguments could be more thoroughly extended to fully explore the implications of a total ban, rather than just stating the health consequences.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0

The essay is organized into logical paragraphs, with a clear introduction, two body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Cohesive devices are used, such as 'To commence with', 'As a result', and 'In conclusion', which help guide the reader. However, some transitions are slightly mechanical or awkward, such as 'moving towards the another reason'. Additionally, referencing is occasionally unclear, and the flow between sentences could be smoother. The paragraphing is appropriate, but the overall structure relies on somewhat repetitive sentence patterns.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The vocabulary is adequate for the task but lacks range and precision. There are several instances of awkward phrasing and word choice errors, such as 'major cause of serious diseases' (should be 'causes'), 'search has shown' (should be 'research'), and 'throat's cancer' (should be 'throat cancer'). The student relies on basic vocabulary and struggles with collocations. To reach a higher band, the student needs to use more sophisticated vocabulary and demonstrate better control over word forms and idiomatic expressions.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.5

The essay contains a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, but there are frequent grammatical errors that occasionally impede clarity. Common issues include subject-verb agreement ('smoking... make a negative impact'), article usage ('the cancer', 'the search'), and prepositional errors ('addicted of taking'). While the meaning is generally understandable, the frequency of these errors prevents the essay from reaching a higher band. The student should focus on basic sentence construction and proofreading for common errors like pluralization and article usage.

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

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