Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · IELTS Academic Practice Accelerator · 2026-09-30

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

In many countries, people do not recycle their rubbish as much as they could.

Why do you think this is? What can be done to change this?

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

Student answer (Band 5.5)

People of many nations are reluctant towards the recycling of garbage as they could. It is due to the lack of sense of responsibility, inadequate sources of recycling and lack of awareness. The governments or communities should take pertinent measures to encourage the people towards recycling

The people in under developed countries are less educated and have minimum sources of living, plus they do not have proper knowledge of environmental pollution caused by the waste materials. For which they lack sense of social responsibility and do not bother for the improvement of their own cities, countries. They also suffer from the lack of facilities required for the recycling of household waste. In addition, if separate recycling bins are not available in residential areas, they can put their waste in the local bins so that they can be accomulated from the same palce.

To overcome this problem, the governments should educate people through educational institutes and in modern age social media could be the best platform for this campaign. The people should be incentivies or rewarded for recycling the waste. The local communities can arrange separate bins for different types of waste in residential areas and ensuring that recyclable materials are collected regularly.

Finally, the governments can impose fines for spreading household waste and not recycling it.

Conclusively, lack of awareness and recycling resources, causes low rates of recycling. The proper environmental education, adequate financial incentives, accessible recycling services and social campaigns can encourage people to develop the habit of recycling and prevent the environment from pollution.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

The response addresses both parts of the prompt by discussing the reasons why people do not recycle as much as they could, such as a lack of awareness and inadequate facilities, and offers practical solutions like educational campaigns, financial incentives, and community infrastructure. The position is clear throughout, and the ideas are generally extended and supported. For instance, the writer explains how the lack of separate bins and education leads to lower recycling rates, and proposes actionable measures like fines and social media campaigns. However, some arguments, such as the discussion on under-developed countries, remain slightly generalised and could have been developed with more specific examples. Overall, the response fulfills the requirements of the task well, aligning closely with the Band 6.5 to 7.0 descriptors.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The essay displays a coherent overall arrangement with a clear progression of ideas from causes in the introduction and body paragraphs to solutions in the subsequent sections, followed by a summary conclusion. Paragraphing is used appropriately to separate different concepts. However, cohesion is sometimes faulty or mechanical, with issues such as sentence fragments and awkward transitions (e.g., starting a sentence with 'For which they lack...'). Referencing is also occasionally unclear. While logical organisation is evident throughout, these mechanical cohesion errors prevent the response from reaching a higher band score, placing it comfortably at Band 6.0.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The student demonstrates an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully using topic-specific terms such as 'environmental pollution', 'household waste', 'recyclable materials', and 'financial incentives'. There are attempts to use less common vocabulary, though this is sometimes accompanied by inaccuracies in word choice and spelling, such as 'accomulated' instead of 'accumulated', 'incenties' instead of 'incentivised', and 'palce' instead of 'place'. Despite these minor lexical and spelling errors, communication is never impeded, and the vocabulary remains minimally sufficient to convey the intended meaning, reflecting the Band 6.0 descriptors.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

The response contains a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, demonstrating attempts at varied syntactic structures such as conditional-style framing ('if separate recycling bins are not available... they can put...') and participial clauses. However, there are noticeable grammatical errors and awkward phrasings throughout the text, such as 'People of many nations are reluctant towards the recycling' and 'suffer from the lack of facilities required for the recycling'. Punctuation is also inconsistent, missing terminal full stops in places. These errors occur frequently enough to cause occasional difficulty for the reader, matching the profile of a Band 5.5 performance.

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

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