Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · IELTS General Essentials · 2026-09-16

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)

Drug activities have been increasing day-by-day in the whole world. It is often argued that dangerous health diseases are caused by smoking and it should be made illegal. I strongly agree that smoking put bad impact on individuals as well as on society.

Starting with causes of smoking, first, it effects the human body. People who are smoking they suffer from many health illnesses for example lung cancer, asthema and stroke as well. This will lead reduce their lifeline. Apart from this, other people like children , pregnent women and others are suffered from illness like asthema if they are nearby any smoker. A survey was conducted in India in 2024, 40% population is non-smoker out of 100 and the percentage of smokers increased from past.

The second cause is that smoking effects the productivity. Smokers are more likely to feel sick rather than non-smokers. Therefore, their productivity may reduce while taking holidays for sickness and the rate of productivity in the company also. Due to burning cigrettes , it pollutes the air and create litter on land. So, environmental impact is the another cause of Smoking. The government should restrict on it and made iilegal for everyone.

To conclude, there are plethora of impacts of smoking such as health issues, decrease in productivity and pollution. It should be made illegal by the goverment by making strict laws on it.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.5

The student addresses the prompt by stating a clear position of strong agreement that smoking should be made illegal, supporting this with points regarding health issues, productivity, and pollution. However, the response falls short of the minimum length requirement, containing only 230 words instead of the required 250 words. This under-length impacts the full development of ideas, leaving points such as the environmental impact and the statistical reference somewhat superficial and unsupported by deeper elaboration. Consequently, while all parts of the task are addressed, the lack of sufficient extension and development due to the word count limitation prevents a higher score.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0

The essay displays a logical overall arrangement with a clear introduction, body paragraphs addressing specific causes and effects, and a brief conclusion. Paragraphing is utilised to separate distinct points, such as health effects versus productivity and environmental impact. However, the progression is sometimes hindered by mechanical transitions like 'Starting with causes of smoking, first...' and 'The second cause is that...'. Furthermore, referencing is occasionally unclear, as seen in the sentence 'People who are smoking they suffer...', which disrupts the flow and cohesion within sentences. Overall organisation is present, but cohesive devices are sometimes clumsy.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The student demonstrates an adequate vocabulary range for the task, attempting some less common items such as 'productivity', 'environmental impact', and 'plethora'. However, there are noticeable word choice and collocation errors throughout the response, such as 'put bad impact' instead of 'have a bad impact', ' lifeline' instead of 'life expectancy', and spelling mistakes like 'asthema' for asthma, 'pregnent' for pregnant, and 'cigrettes' for cigarettes. While communication is not severely impeded, these lexical inaccuracies and spelling errors restrict the score to a Band 5.5.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The student attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, but control is inconsistent. There are frequent grammatical errors, such as subject-verb agreement issues ('People who are smoking they suffer'), incorrect prepositions ('restrict on it'), and word form errors ('made iilegal'). Punctuation errors are also present, such as spacing issues around commas ('children , pregnent women'). Although the meaning remains generally understandable, the frequency of errors in basic and complex structures alike places this response firmly in the Band 5 category.

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