Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · IELTS Academic Practice Accelerator · 2026-11-04

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 today society, smoking is a major concern due to its detrimental effects on the health. some argue that smoking should be illegal to prevents from serious illness. I strongly agree with points of view.

Firstly, smoking is leading cause to various life-threatning illness such as lung cancer, heart diease and respiratory disorders. This is not only affect the smokers but also non-smokers due to passive smoking.This illness not only affect the smokers but also pose a significant burden on the healthcare systems. The governments should implements the strict punishment and heavy fine on smoking on the public places. By making the smoking illegal it will reduced the illness among the people ultimately lessening the strain on the healthcare resources. Smoking also greatly effect the childern and older people they suffer from different respiratory disease. For example, asthma is most common disease among the young generation due to bad air quality and air pollution.

On the other hand, by imposing heavy taxes on smoking ingredients the price of smoking increase considerably it will affects the smoker. Due to this number of smoker may reduced because of high prices. Furthermore, smoking should be illegal may lead to decrease in the number of smokers among the young generation. The governments should start the compaigns about the harmful affects of smoking on the human health. For instance the governments show the advertisemensts on different news channels.

To conclude, I strongly agree that smoking should be banned completely. Since smoking leads to serious dieaseses like lung-cancerand harms both of smokers and non-smokers, making it illegal is necessary to protect public health.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

Your position is clear from the introduction (“I strongly agree”) and conclusion, and you give relevant reasons: smoking harms smokers and others through passive smoking, adds pressure to healthcare, and affects children and older people. You also suggest penalties, taxes and public-awareness campaigns. This addresses the question, but some points are not fully developed or precisely connected to making smoking illegal. For example, the asthma example is attributed to poor air quality and pollution without showing how it supports the case against smoking specifically, while taxation and campaigns are alternatives to prohibition rather than explanations of why a ban is necessary. Develop these distinctions and support your main reasons with clearer examples to make the argument more complete.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The response has a recognisable structure: an introduction, a main paragraph presenting harms and penalties, a paragraph on taxes and campaigns, and a conclusion. Sequencing words such as “Firstly,” “On the other hand,” and “To conclude” help signal the stages of the argument. However, progression within paragraphs is sometimes unclear, and connections between ideas can feel mechanical. The repeated claim that illness affects smokers and non-smokers, followed by another statement about its effects, creates unnecessary repetition. The shift from supporting a ban to discussing taxes and campaigns also needs a clearer explanation of how these measures relate to your position. Use topic sentences to establish each paragraph’s purpose and link examples directly to the point they illustrate.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

You use relevant topic vocabulary, including “passive smoking,” “healthcare systems,” “heavy taxes,” and “public health,” and you attempt more formal expressions such as “detrimental effects” and “significant burden.” This gives you a workable range for discussing the issue. However, inaccurate word choice, collocation and spelling are noticeable and sometimes make the meaning less clear: “smoking ingredients” is not a natural phrase for tobacco products, and “smoking is leading cause to” is awkward. There are also misspellings such as “life-threatning,” “diease,” and “compaigns.” Build accuracy by learning common collocations for this topic and proofreading spelling and word forms; this will make your ideas easier to follow.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

You attempt both simple and more complex sentence forms, including a reason clause (“Since smoking leads to serious diseases…”) and a result construction (“By making the smoking illegal…”). The overall meaning is generally recoverable, but errors in verb forms, agreement, articles and sentence construction occur across the response. For example, “some argue that smoking should be illegal to prevents” should use a base verb after “to,” while “The governments should implements” has an incorrect verb form. In “This is not only affect,” the auxiliary structure is faulty, and several sentences join ideas without clear punctuation. Practise checking subject–verb agreement and verb patterns, then divide long or joined sentences into complete, clearly punctuated clauses.

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