Band 6.0 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.0 · IELTS General Essentials · 2026-09-01

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 very dangerous for a individual's health. It can be reason of many serious diseases. I agree with this statement to some extent, although smoking is a cause of many illnesses, it helps people to reduce stress level and feel relaxed. I will discuss my viewpoint behind this statement in the upcoming paragraph.

Firstly, cancer is a life threatening disease and the main cause of having this illness is smoking. When people smoke, they inhale many chemicals in their body, and these substances have detrimental effects on their liver. Therefore, their liver get damaged and they have high chance of having cancer. It is very hard to recover from this illness. As a result, smoking should be illegal, so nobody can buy it. For example, In India almost 30% people have cancer due to high level of smoking and many of them die each year.

Despite causing serious illnesses, it has some benefits also. It helps people to reduce stress level. These days, people are living a very busy life, and they perform multiple tasks at same time, such as office work, family responsibilities, and finance management. Sometimes they feel very stressed while performing these duties, so to reduce this stress they smoke which give them a sense of happiness. As cigarettes contain nicotine, it temporarily provides relaxation, happiness and pleasure. Therefore, by smoking people can mitigate their stress level for short period.

To conclude, although smoking allows individuals to reduce their stress level, it also cause many diseases which can become a cause of death. Government should use a balance approach for smoking, if any person is adult and wants to buy cigarette in the special circumstances, he should have permission to buy, whereas It should be completely ban for the minor people.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0

You have addressed all parts of the prompt by discussing the health risks of smoking and providing a balanced view regarding its perceived stress-relieving benefits. Your position is clear throughout the essay. However, the development of your ideas is somewhat limited. For instance, the claim that smoking helps reduce stress is a common argument, but it could be supported with more nuanced reasoning rather than just mentioning nicotine. Additionally, the conclusion introduces a new, specific policy suggestion (restricting sales to minors) that was not previously explored in the body paragraphs. To reach a higher band, ensure that your main arguments are fully extended and that your conclusion reflects the points already discussed.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0

The essay is organized into logical paragraphs, each with a clear focus. You use some cohesive devices such as 'Firstly', 'As a result', 'Despite', and 'To conclude' to guide the reader. However, the use of these devices is occasionally mechanical or repetitive. For example, the transition between the health risks and the benefits could be smoother. Furthermore, some referencing is slightly unclear, such as the use of 'it' in the second paragraph, which could refer to either smoking or the disease. Improving the variety of your linking words and ensuring that each sentence flows naturally from the previous one will help improve your score in this criterion.

Lexical Resource — Band 6.0

You demonstrate an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, using terms like 'detrimental effects', 'mitigate', and 'life-threatening'. However, there are some inaccuracies in word choice and collocation. For example, you write 'reason of many serious diseases' instead of 'cause of', and 'high level of smoking' instead of 'high prevalence of smoking'. Additionally, there are minor errors such as 'balance approach' (should be 'balanced approach') and 'minor people' (should be 'minors' or 'young people'). To improve, focus on learning common collocations and using more precise terminology to express your ideas with greater clarity and sophistication.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.5

You use a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, which is appropriate for this level. However, there are frequent grammatical errors throughout the text. Common issues include article usage ('a individual's health' should be 'an individual's health'), subject-verb agreement ('their liver get damaged' should be 'their liver gets damaged'), and pluralization ('buy cigarette' should be 'buy cigarettes'). While these errors do not impede communication, they are persistent. To achieve a higher band, you should focus on proofreading your work to correct basic errors in articles, prepositions, and verb forms, and attempt to incorporate a wider variety of complex sentence structures with greater accuracy.

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

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