Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · 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 5.5)

In this era, smoking has became very popular among population. It can cause serious illness like cancer and so on, while some argues that it should be made illegal by goverment to stop its consumption. In my opinion, smoking should be made illegal because, It damages health and will burden the loved ones.

To begin with, smoking has many disadvantages to it like health damages. It can cause many serious illness to an indivudual that might be untreatable. Nowadays, smoking has became so common among people, consuming it is also made very easier, like many companies now gives smoking breaks to their employees. These developments has lead to growth of these smoking habbits. Goverment should impose higher taxes and make rules and regulation more tighter for companies selling cigarettes.

Moreover, the addicted tend to ignore the emotional aspect of smoking.

A family and loved ones cares about health of an person, habbit of such toxic products will increase stress of lovedones. For instance, friends of mine smoke 6 to 7 cigarettes in a day and is an bad habbit. Their parents don't know about this things and be in a state where they believe their son don't do such habbits. This things if came into the knowledge can affect their relation with their parents.

In conclusion, Smoking has became so common in these days and often argued that it should be made illegal to prevent its usage. However, In my opinion, i support these argument and this toxic products that harms health and relations should be made illegal.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses the prompt and presents a clear position that smoking should be made illegal because it damages health and burdens loved ones. However, the development of ideas is somewhat limited and under-developed, placing the response at this level. While the introduction outlines the writer's stance, the body paragraphs rely on general statements rather than fully extended arguments or robust examples. For instance, the mention of friends smoking six to seven cigarettes is a personal anecdote, but it is not clearly linked back to the broader argument of why prohibition is necessary. To move higher, the writer needs to explore their main points in greater depth, using more substantive supporting evidence and well-reasoned explanations rather than repeating similar ideas in the conclusion.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The essay displays some overall organization with recognizable paragraph breaks and basic cohesive devices such as 'To begin with', 'Moreover', and 'In conclusion'. However, there is a lack of clear overall progression, and cohesion is frequently faulty or mechanical. Referencing is not always clear, as seen in phrases like 'These developments has lead' and 'This things if came into the knowledge', which disrupt the logical flow between sentences. Additionally, the progression of ideas within paragraphs feels disjointed at times, particularly in the second body paragraph where the transition from company breaks to personal family stress is abrupt. To improve, the writer should use a wider variety of cohesive devices more accurately and ensure that each sentence logically builds upon the previous one to create a smoother, more unified structure throughout the text.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The vocabulary used is limited but minimally adequate for the task, allowing the writer to convey basic ideas about health and smoking. There are, however, noticeable errors in word choice, word form, and spelling that occasionally cause difficulty for the reader. Examples include 'has became' instead of 'has become', 'indivudual' instead of 'individual', 'habbit' instead of 'habit', and 'goverment' instead of 'government'. The writer attempts some less common vocabulary, such as 'consumption' and 'prohibition' concepts, but these are undermined by frequent inaccuracies in collocation and spelling. To achieve a higher band, the writer must expand their lexical range, demonstrate better control of word formation, and ensure accurate spelling of common academic and general vocabulary.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writing exhibits a limited range of structures, relying primarily on simple sentences alongside frequent attempts at complex structures that are often faulty. There are numerous grammatical errors involving subject-verb agreement, verb forms, and pluralization, such as 'smoking can cause serious illness' instead of 'illnesses', 'while some argues' instead of 'while some argue', and 'These developments has lead' instead of 'have led'. Punctuation and article usage also show frequent inaccuracies, such as unnecessary commas interrupting clauses and missing articles before singular countable nouns like 'family' and 'state'. These frequent errors can occasionally cause difficulty for the reader. To progress, the writer needs to demonstrate greater control over complex sentence patterns and improve grammatical accuracy across basic structures.

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