Band 5.0 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.0 · IELTS Academic Practice Accelerator · 2026-10-04

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)

It said that smoking can cause several health damages and the regulation should prohibit this. I agree with this statement, since I believe that smoking cause lungs damages, especially for passive smokers, and addiction.

Many smokers has suffers from lungs cancer and other respiration systems damages. It is because cigars contain several substain which become toxic when it is lighted. Furthermore, it is really more dangerous for people whom near the smokers, because what they are directly breathe is not clean oxygen, but already contain harmful substain. For example, people who smoke frequently, at first, did not realize the symptoms of broken lungs. But as the time goes by, the illness became more dangerous and is hard to heal from.

Furthermore, smoking can cause addiction for active smokers, making them difficult to stop smoking. When smokers already suffer from lungs damages, it would be hard to quit smoking since already get addicted by it.

To sum up, smoking should be prohibited since it is cause several dangerous illness and addcition.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.0

The response addresses the task only partially and falls significantly short of the word count requirement, containing only 170 words instead of the minimum 250. The writer presents a clear position agreeing that smoking should be made illegal, but the ideas are limited and under-developed. For instance, the points about health damages and passive smoking are stated simply without sufficient extension or detailed examples. Furthermore, the argument would benefit from a broader exploration of the social and economic implications of making smoking illegal to fully address all parts of the prompt.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

There is some basic organisation with an introduction, body paragraphs, and a brief conclusion, but the response lacks clear overall progression. Paragraphing is attempted, though the body paragraphs are somewhat repetitive in their focus on lung damage and addiction. Cohesive devices are used, but they are sometimes repetitive or basic, such as the frequent reliance on 'Furthermore' to link sentences and paragraphs. Referencing is also occasionally unclear, which prevents the text from flowing smoothly from one idea to the next.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The vocabulary used is limited but minimally adequate to convey the basic message. There are noticeable lexical errors and issues with word formation, such as 'health damages' instead of 'health damage', 'cigars' instead of 'cigarettes', 'substain' instead of 'substances', and 'addcition'. Additionally, awkward phrasing like 'is hard to heal from' and 'broken lungs' causes some difficulty for the reader and prevents the response from achieving a higher band.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writer demonstrates a very limited range of structures, relying mostly on simple and flawed complex sentences. There are frequent grammatical errors throughout the text, including subject-verb agreement issues ('Many smokers has suffers'), incorrect verb forms ('what they are directly breathe'), and prepositions inside grammatical patterns ('for people whom near the smokers'). Punctuation and article usage also show frequent inaccuracies that can cause difficulty for the reader, reflecting a need for tighter control over basic sentence mechanics.

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

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