Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · IELTS Academic Practice Accelerator · 2026-09-23

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)

There is an ongoing debate about whether smoking can cause dangerous diseases and authorities should make cigrettes prohibited for people. However, I am strongly convinced with this view that smoking can damage individual's health as they contain harmful substances. One of the main reasons why I agree with this view is that smoking can cause severe diseases as they contain life-threatning substances such as nicotine, tar and carbon-monoxide and are highly contagious. This is mainly becuase t hese substances are highly addictive and can damage the lungs. In addition, they can reduce the ability of the heart to produce high quality blood. For instance, people who are fond of cigrettes, may have a chance to develop diseases like bronchitis, asthma and alveolar complexity. Consequently, this might lead to frequent hospital visits and financial problems. Another main reason of my agreement is that passive-smoking is way more dangerous than the active smoking. The main reason is that family members who are older and women who is expecting a child, this can cause a severe health problem and can damaging their lungs as well. For example, If a man smoke a cigrette near his pregnant wife, this can affect the child's overall well-being. As a result, families might loss a baby and their older ones. In conclusion, Cigrettes should be make prohibited by government as this can severe health proble

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.0

The response addresses the main prompt by expressing a clear position that smoking should be prohibited due to its severe health risks. The writer presents relevant ideas, such as active and passive smoking dangers, and attempts to extend them with examples like bronchitis, asthma, and the effects on pregnant women. However, the development is somewhat limited, containing slight inaccuracies such as claiming substances are 'contagious'. Furthermore, the response falls short of the minimum word count requirement, containing only 228 words instead of the required 250. This negative impact on task completion pulls the band down into the lower range. While the position is clear and the arguments are understandable, the under-length nature and under-development of some supporting points prevent it from reaching a higher band score.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The essay displays a generally coherent overall arrangement with clear paragraphing, dividing the introduction, two body paragraphs, and a conclusion. The writer uses basic cohesive devices and signposting language to structure the ideas, such as 'One of the main reasons' and 'In addition'. However, referencing and cohesion are sometimes faulty or mechanical. For instance, transitional phrases like 'Consequently' and 'As a result' are used, but some pronoun reference and cohesive links are unclear, particularly in the passive smoking paragraph where the sentence structure breaks down ('family members who are older and women who is expecting a child, this can cause...'). Paragraph progression is present, but mechanical phrasing and occasional awkward transitions prevent it from achieving a higher score.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, attempting some less common and topic-specific terms such as 'life-threatening', 'carbon-monoxide', 'passive-smoking', and 'bronchitis'. However, there are noticeable spelling and word choice errors throughout the text, including 'cigrettes', 'contagious' (misused in place of infectious or harmful), 'becuase', and grammatical collocation issues like 'damage their lungs as well' and 'loss a baby' instead of 'lose'. While the vocabulary is minimally adequate to convey the core message about smoking hazards, the frequency of spelling errors and vocabulary inaccuracies restricts the lexical score.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, incorporating relative clauses and conditional structures, such as 'If a man smoke a cigrette near his pregnant wife, this can affect the child's overall well-being.' However, there are frequent grammatical errors and poor control over subject-verb agreement and tense consistency, such as 'authorities should make cigrettes prohibited', 'women who is expecting', and 'Cigrettes should be make prohibited'. Punctuation and sentence construction errors are also apparent, notably in the unfinished concluding sentence ('as this can severe health proble'). These persistent errors can cause some difficulty for the reader and prevent the grammar from meeting the threshold for a higher band.

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