Band 5.0 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.0 · IELTS Academic Practice Accelerator · 2026-08-04

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 5.0)

Smoking is a process in which people inhale poisonous materials inside which destroy their internal organs as well as their mental stability and it is the cause of many diseases.

Smoking can cause serious illnesses like lungs cancer , throat cancer , Pneumonia, bloody cough and many others. It is the direct way of killing himself from inside and it's result is death. There are two types of smokers; active and passive smokers . Active smokers are those whose regularly smoke and passive smokers are those who lives with the smokers. The side effects of Cigarette are more on the passive smoker as compare to active smoker because, active smokers smoke directly through filters while passive smokers are inhaling the poisonous smoke directly without any filter so it effects more than active smokers.

Therefore, In my opinion smoking in public areas should be illegal as the reason I mentioned earlier. Smokers are destroying their health as well as the health of people who are living with them. So for public safety the smoking should be illegal and the government should make a policy to take an action against the person who will be smoking in public areas. And government should ban the smoking to prevent the youth because according to recent research mostly the smokers are young youth so smoking is illegal and government should make it illegal to smoke personally as well as in public areas to prevent all from these chronic diseases and death.

Hence, smoking is a very bad habit and it should be prohibited in the state to rescue the youth from this addiction.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.0

The response addresses the prompt by expressing a clear position that smoking should be illegal. However, the development of ideas is somewhat repetitive and lacks depth. While you mention health risks and the impact on passive smokers, the argument for a total ban on personal smoking is not fully explored or supported with nuanced reasoning. The essay tends to over-generalize, and the distinction between public and private bans is slightly blurred. To improve, focus on providing more sophisticated arguments, such as the economic burden on healthcare systems or the effectiveness of public health campaigns versus prohibition, to better support your position.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.0

The essay is organized into paragraphs, but the flow between ideas is often mechanical. You use basic cohesive devices like 'Therefore' and 'Hence,' but the transitions between sentences within paragraphs feel disjointed. For example, the jump from discussing passive smoking to the conclusion is abrupt. The referencing is sometimes unclear, such as 'the reason I mentioned earlier,' which does not effectively link back to a specific point. To improve, use a wider variety of cohesive devices and ensure that each sentence logically follows the previous one to create a smoother progression of ideas.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.0

The vocabulary is adequate for the task but remains quite basic and repetitive. You use terms like 'poisonous materials,' 'serious illnesses,' and 'bad habit,' which are functional but lack the precision and variety expected at higher bands. There are also some awkward collocations, such as 'young youth' (which is redundant) and 'killing himself from inside.' To achieve a higher score, try to incorporate more sophisticated vocabulary related to health and public policy, such as 'detrimental,' 'prohibit,' 'legislation,' or 'respiratory complications,' and ensure you use them in the correct context.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The essay contains a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, but there are frequent grammatical errors that occasionally impede clarity. Common issues include subject-verb agreement (e.g., 'those whose regularly smoke'), incorrect article usage, and punctuation errors, such as the spacing before commas. The sentence 'it effects more than active smokers' uses the wrong form of the word (should be 'affects'). While the meaning is generally clear, the high frequency of these errors limits the score. Focus on mastering basic sentence construction and proofreading for common slips in verb forms and pluralization.

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

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