Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer
Overall Band Score: 5.5 · IELTS General Essentials · 2026-10-03
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)
Nowadays, smoking has been highly popular amongst the younger and older adults. Moreover, it creates negative impact on each individual's well being. It has to be illegal in every country. However, I am fully agree with this notion.
To begin with, myriad of human beings are suffered from some physical illnesses like chronic pulmonary obstructive disorder, asthma and difficulty in breathing. It happens mainly due to the smoking habit in their day to day life. Furthermore, they would have to face some serious disease like cancer. For example, according to the media report in the year 2025, they said that, approximately 80% of the population is doing smoking and as a result it creates life threatening condition for them.
Furthermore, it may create bad influence on children's health as they are smoking cigarette and vape and some other alternative forms of smoking. Hence, children's memory and overall mental health is being affected by consuming the smoking material. For instance, one of my cousin has a habit of doing this and as a result he is suffering from short term memory loss and anxiety.
On the other hand, the government should not have to banned or make it illegal as some of them are highly addicted and even if they do not do smoking then they may feel lethargic at work and it decreases their productivity.
To conclude, it is being said that, authorities has to take strict action on banning smoking as it is considered as harmful for everyone's physical and mental well being.
AI examiner evaluation
| Criterion | Band |
|---|---|
| Task Achievement / Task Response | 5.5 |
| Coherence and Cohesion | 5.5 |
| Lexical Resource | 5.5 |
| Grammatical Range and Accuracy | 5.0 |
| Overall | 5.5 |
Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5
The response addresses the task partially, with a position that becomes somewhat confusing due to contradictory phrasing, where the writer states 'However, I am fully agree with this notion' after suggesting it should be illegal. Ideas are presented, such as physical illnesses and the influence on children, but these are limited and under-developed. For instance, the claim that 'approximately 80% of the population is doing smoking' lacks proper context or support, and the counter-argument regarding worker productivity is very briefly introduced without adequate expansion. To reach a higher standard, the writer needs to maintain a clearer and more consistent position throughout, extending and supporting all main ideas with more relevant examples and deeper elaboration rather than relying on generalisations.
Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5
The essay displays some organisation with basic paragraphing, but there is no clear overall progression from introduction to conclusion. Cohesive devices are at times inadequate, inaccurate, or repetitive, such as the frequent use of 'Furthermore' to link consecutive body paragraphs. Referencing is also occasionally unclear, as seen in the phrase 'according to the media report in the year 2025, they said that', where the pronoun lacks a precise antecedent. To improve cohesion, the writer should employ a wider and more accurate variety of transition signals to show logical relationships between ideas and ensure that referencing within and across sentences is precise and transparent.
Lexical Resource: Band 5.5
The vocabulary used is limited but minimally adequate for the task. The writer attempts some less common phrasing, such as 'chronic pulmonary obstructive disorder' and 'life threatening condition', but these are accompanied by noticeable errors in word choice, collocation, and word form, such as 'doing smoking' instead of 'smoking' or 'smoke' and 'banned' instead of 'ban'. There are also awkward collocations like 'consuming the smoking material'. These lexical inaccuracies occasionally cause some difficulty for the reader. To achieve a higher band, the writer must expand their lexical range, master natural collocations related to health and lifestyle topics, and improve precision in word forms.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0
The text demonstrates a limited range of structures, relying mostly on simple sentences alongside a few attempts at complex forms that are often faulty. There are frequent errors in grammar and punctuation that can cause difficulty for the reader, including verb form and agreement errors such as 'myriad of human beings are suffered', article omissions like 'media report', and prepositional inaccuracies. Additionally, there are issues with redundant auxiliary verbs and tense usage, such as 'the government should not have to banned'. To progress, the writer needs to increase sentence variety, eliminate frequent basic errors, and exercise much better control over verb tenses, passive constructions, and modal verb patterns.
See this exact question answered at other band scores. The same prompt compared across bands.
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