Band 5.0 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.0 · IELTS Academic Practice Accelerator · 2026-11-03

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 may lead to serious health issues. It should be made illegal. A friend of mine had doed due to continuous smoking. In my eyes, smoking is injurious to health. I agree with the statement.

Smoking kills. A smoker not only harms himself but also his surroundings, especially his family. I know a womanwho had died because of smoking. She never smoke but her husband did. He was a chain smoker.The smoke of cigarettes badly affected the lungs of the woman because she lived in the smoke the whole day and the whole night. She had a bad cough which resulted in the failure of her lungs. In the result, she could not survived. Then her husband recognized that he should not smoke anymore.

Smoking can cause cancer as well. Cancer is such a disease that leads the patient to ultimate death. In my opinion, smoking should be made illegal and its sale must be banned.

Smoking is a life threatening activity that may lead to death. It must be banned in all over the world.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.0

Your position is clear: you agree that smoking should be illegal, and you give relevant reasons, including harm to non-smokers and the risk of cancer. The account of the woman exposed to her husband’s smoke is a specific example that supports your point about second-hand smoke. However, the response addresses the issue only partially: the cancer claim is asserted but not explained, and the argument for making smoking illegal is not weighed against possible objections or supported with broader reasoning. The conclusion repeats your view rather than drawing the reasons together. The response is also 74 words below the required minimum, leaving limited space to develop your ideas. Explain each reason and connect it more directly to why a legal ban is justified.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.0

The response has a recognisable structure: an introduction states your view, two body paragraphs give reasons, and a final paragraph restates your position. This makes the main message easy to identify. However, progression is limited because the conclusion largely repeats the introduction, and the second body paragraph contains only a brief claim about cancer. Some links between ideas are unclear or repetitive, such as “Smoking kills” followed by another statement that smoking can lead to death. The example about the woman could be organised more clearly by showing the sequence from exposure to illness and then explaining its relevance to the proposed ban. Develop each paragraph around one reason, use clear transitions, and avoid repeating the same point.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

You use enough topic-related vocabulary to communicate your basic argument, including “serious health issues,” “chain smoker,” “lungs,” and “life threatening.” These terms help keep the response focused on smoking and its effects. However, the range is limited, with repeated use of “smoking,” “death,” and “bad,” and some word choices or forms are inaccurate or unnatural. For example, “the smoke of cigarettes” is less natural than “cigarette smoke,” while “injurious to health” sounds formulaic in this context. “Cancer is such a disease that leads the patient to ultimate death” is also an imprecise way to express the risk. Build a wider set of accurate phrases for health effects, exposure, and regulation, and check collocations before using them.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

Most sentences use simple structures, and the reader can generally follow your meaning. You also attempt a longer explanation with “A smoker not only harms himself but also his surroundings,” followed by details about the woman’s illness. However, the range is limited, and frequent errors affect accuracy. Examples include “had doed” and “She never smoke,” where the verb forms are incorrect, and “she could not survived,” where the verb after “could not” should be in its base form. There are also errors in “a womanwho” and “in all over the world.” Practise past-tense narration and modal verb patterns, and proofread for spacing and sentence boundaries. More accurate complex sentences would help you explain cause and effect clearly.

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

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