Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 17 · 2026-09-12

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Some people believe that it is best to accept a bad situation, such as an unsatisfactory job or shortage of money. Others argue that it is better to try and improve such situations.

Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Student answer (Band 5.5)

It is true that, taking risks both in people's professional lives and their personal lives play a vital role. Despite some disadvantages, it can be outweighed by the advantages of taking risks.

It is a common scenario that, people often go through some delusional situations when they can barely make a decision for their professional and personal lives. Sometimes, these are also a reason of having exhausted and stressful time and these can easily led to be demotivated in their lives. To surpass this issues and for the major prosperity in future, it has significant role in people's lives to take risks. For instance, in professional areas, people who are assigned with corporate job, they often feel fear to be vocal with their bosses or colleagues as they assume that this can affect their jobs they need. For this reason, sometimes even they get suffered by the office politics. Some job holders think that their salaries are low compared to what they deserve, in which case they should take the risk of quiting the job and find another one which is suitable for them. It is also important for people to take risks in their personal lives such as to choose a subject to study or to travel somewhere solely.

There have both advantages and disadvantages of taking risks. On the one hand, by taking risks people can easily motivate themselves by their own. It can grow their confidence that they can make a decision. People can reach at the peak of their aim that they once speculate of. On the other hand, the disadvantages are for example, people often get into trouble by taking risks like when they visit a new place alone it could be deleterious thing for their safety or in professional terms there could be issues for quitting or switching their job or start a business. But allover, people can improve their professional and person skills, experience new things, prosper their knowledge by taking risks which overcome the disadvantages.

In conclusion, despite having some disadvantages, the advantages of taking risks outweighed the issues and it is important to take risks in professional and personal lives.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.5

The student addresses the prompt by discussing the two views regarding accepting a bad situation versus trying to improve it, framing the debate around the concept of taking risks. A clear position is established in the introduction and maintained throughout the essay. However, the connection between 'accepting a bad situation' and 'taking risks' is slightly blurred, as the essay focuses more broadly on risk-taking rather than directly addressing why people choose to accept unsatisfactory conditions versus changing them. Ideas are presented and supported with examples, such as quitting a job to escape low pay or office politics, but some arguments tend to over-generalise and lack depth. Overall, the task is addressed adequately, fitting the criteria for a Band 6.0.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5

The essay is divided into four paragraphs, providing a recognizable overall structure with an introduction, body paragraphs discussing advantages and disadvantages, and a conclusion. However, cohesion is sometimes faulty or mechanical. For instance, the transition 'There have both advantages and disadvantages' contains a grammatical error, and phrases like 'On the one hand' and 'On the other hand' are used, though paragraphing organization could be more logically managed. Referencing is occasionally unclear, such as 'these can easily led to be demotivated' where pronoun referencing is weak. Progression is somewhat repetitive, as the body paragraphs reiterate similar points about professional and personal life. This performance aligns with Band 6.0.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The student demonstrates an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, attempting less common lexical items such as 'delusional', 'prosperity', 'deleterious', and 'speculate'. However, there are notable word choice and collocation errors throughout the text, such as 'delusional situations', 'surpass this issues', 'get suffered', and 'person skills'. Spelling is generally acceptable, but inaccuracies in word formation (e.g., 'quiting' instead of 'quitting', 'allover' instead of 'overall') and awkward phrasing restrict the score to a Band 5.5. The vocabulary is minimally adequate to convey the message, but noticeable errors impede precision.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The response exhibits a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, but control over complex structures is inconsistent. There are frequent grammatical errors, such as subject-verb agreement issues ('taking risks... play', 'these are also a reason of having', 'there have both advantages'), tense inconsistencies, and preposition errors ('fear to be vocal', 'travel somewhere solely'). Furthermore, constructions like 'can easily led to be demotivated' and 'the advantages of taking risks outweighed' show a lack of control over verb forms. While meaning is generally clear despite these errors, the density of grammatical slips places this response firmly in the Band 5.0 range.

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

Browse more IELTS Writing model answers or get your own writing scored by the same AI examiner.