Band 6.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.5 · IELTS General Essentials · 2026-09-22

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 6.5)

Smoking leads to chronic diseases and death, making it undisputable to be implemented illegal.

It starts with "trying it just once", then addiction and then eventually inviting diseases like tuberculosis, tumors, cancer, complete lung disfuntionality, and more.

To begin with, smoking has been glorified in movies, internet, books, and other entertainment media. It is represented as something that makes a person look cool. All the shots of actors performing action scenes with a cigarette in their mouths fighting villains are a very common sight across all media.These scenes inspire adoloscents negatively. In the name of experiencing those emotions, these young teenagers start smoking and before they know it, it transforms into an addiction.

Furthermore, families with parents or other elders smoking also influence their younger generation to do the same. Sometimes, it leads families to break apart. In some instances, some people also start smoking as a medium of relieving their frustration or exhaustion. Some children who have survived domestic abuse lean onto smoking too later when they grow up as a way to get rid of their stress or anxieties.

However, this is not the correct choice. This just adds more harm to them. Prompt mearures should be taken to avoid this. The government authorities should take immediate steps to help people get any kind of psychological or monetary help required. The society should also stop shaming people suffering from smoking addiction, or dehumanising them for having any kind of mental disorders or any past traumas.

To conclude, it is very crucial to eradicate smoking and other similar addictions. It is in the hands of the people as well as the government. There are survivors of lung cancer caused by smoking who claim they should have never started it in the first place. There are also cases where people have overcome addiction despite how deep down inside the rabbit hole they were. Hence, it is definitely possible to eradicate it. The first step to acheive this goal is to ban smoking. It is our reponsibility as a society to help each other gain this. With a contributed effort, everyone will thrive and succeed.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 7.0

The response addresses the prompt by discussing whether smoking should be made illegal and presents a clear position throughout. The writer explores the causes of smoking, such as media glorification and family influence, and proposes both governmental and societal solutions. Ideas are generally extended and supported, though some points, such as the transition from media influence to adolescent addiction, tend to over-generalise. The argument that smoking should be banned is stated clearly in the introduction and reinforced in the conclusion. While the development could be slightly more rigorous in places to reach higher bands, all parts of the task are addressed adequately, fitting the Band 7 criteria.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.5

The essay displays a clear logical organisation and progression throughout. Each paragraph has a distinct focus, starting with an introduction, moving into causes such as media and family influence, discussing solutions, and ending with a clear conclusion. Cohesive devices are used to connect ideas, such as 'To begin with', 'Furthermore', 'However', and 'To conclude'. However, paragraphing is slightly disrupted by single-sentence paragraphs like 'However, this is not the correct choice.', which detracts from seamless cohesion. Referencing and progression remain clear overall, earning a solid Band 6.5 or 7.0, with 6.5 reflecting the mechanical nature of some transitions and paragraph structure.

Lexical Resource — Band 6.0

The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, attempting less common items such as 'undisputable', 'disfuntionality', 'glorified', and 'dehumanising'. However, there are noticeable spelling and word choice errors, such as 'disfuntionality' (dysfunctionality), 'adoloscents' (adolescents), 'nearures' (measures), and 'acheive' (achieve). Collocations are occasionally awkward, such as 'lean onto smoking'. Despite these inaccuracies, communication is not impeded, and the range is sufficient to convey complex ideas, placing the response firmly at Band 6.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 6.0

The response demonstrates a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, utilizing relative clauses and conditional-like structures. There are several grammatical errors and punctuation issues throughout the text, for instance, 'making it undisputable to be implemented illegal' (awkward phrasing and incorrect grammar) and missing spaces after punctuation marks. However, the errors rarely impede communication, and the writer shows good control over meaning despite structural awkwardness. The grammatical control aligns well with the Band 6 descriptors.

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

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