Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · IELTS Academic Practice Accelerator · 2026-09-30

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

We no longer need to have animals kept in zoos, so zoos should be closed.

Do you agree or disagree?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Zoos was once a happy place for childern and families to explore more about nature. Most of the school's day trip prefered zoo visits as it would be both educational and entertaining for the childern. Visiting zoo is more prefered than visiting the museum for primary school students as childern seems more interesting in interacting with the living organisums instead of just looking at the statue or rocks. Few years back, schools and parents loves to take their childern to zoo so they can learn about other species, how they live,clean or hunt for their survival. childern interact with different kind of animals like feeding some birds or riding camels, horses or elephants.

As soon as, zoo were clean and was not harming the animals, people love to visit it with their families. A huge, safe area which is full of wild life and natural humming sounds of birdds always fasinate people to come and spend time there. For educational purposes, teachers likely to visit zoo with their class in order to study the animal's behaviour and their habitat. Other than that, artist come to get insipration from the nature and then experiment with differnt type of textures and colors.

Besides that, Zoo take alot of maintance and have a lot of expences, that was hard to fulfill from zoo entery tickets. To cope that, zoo management install swings and amusment park rides to attract more customers and generate revenue from that. Those rides actually worked to generate revenue but it also disturbs the calmness of the wild life habitat. People whp used to bring their childern for educational purpposes, now they can't distract their kids from rides or swings. In addition to that, their is alot of waste and petroleum smell all over the place which cause wild life to suffer alot, so now animals are lethargic and weak who can not attract anyone.

In conclsion, I suggest zoo should be closed as their is no need to kept them in resitricted environment which can not only harm their health but is of no use for the childern or any interested party.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

The response addresses the prompt regarding whether zoos should be closed, presenting a clear position that they should be shut down due to animal welfare concerns and commercial distractions. The writer explores the historical educational value of zoos in the first two paragraphs before shifting to their financial struggles and the negative impact of amusement park rides in the third paragraph. While the ideas are relevant, some points are under-developed or repetitive, such as the discussion on school trips and the general deterioration of animal conditions. There is a tendency to over-generalise without providing specific, concrete examples beyond general observations. Consequently, the task response aligns well with the Band 6 descriptors, as all parts are addressed, but the development of ideas lacks depth and specific supporting evidence.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

The essay displays a coherent overall arrangement with a clear introduction, body paragraphs addressing distinct themes (historical benefits, commercialization issues), and a concluding statement. Paragraphing is attempted, though paragraph breaks are occasionally misplaced, such as grouping contrasting ideas together or keeping paragraphs overly dense. Cohesive devices are used, but some are faulty, unnatural, or repetitive, such as 'As soon as, zoo were clean' and 'Besides that, Zoo take alot of maintance'. Referencing is sometimes unclear, particularly with pronoun use regarding animals and visitors. Overall, the logical progression is apparent, but mechanical and inaccurate cohesion places this text firmly at Band 5.5, which rounds to a Band 6 based on overall structural flow.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The vocabulary used is adequate for the task, allowing the writer to communicate basic ideas about zoos, education, and animal welfare. However, there is a very limited range of less common lexical items, and frequent spelling and word-choice errors are present throughout the text. Examples include 'childern' (children), 'prefered' (preferred), 'organisums' (organisms), 'maintance' (maintenance), 'expences' (expenses), 'entery' (entry), 'amusment' (amusement), 'whp' (who), and 'conclsion' (conclusion). While these errors do not completely impede communication, their high frequency and the presence of basic lexical inadequacies prevent the score from reaching a higher band. The lexical resource matches the Band 5 descriptors.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, but grammatical control is weak throughout the response. There are frequent errors in subject-verb agreement and tense consistency, such as 'Zoos was once a happy place', 'zoo were clean and was not harming', and 'animals are lethargic and weak who can not attract anyone'. Punctuation and article usage are also problematic, with missing commas, misplaced apostrophes (e.g., 'school's day trip'), and missing articles before singular nouns. Although the meaning is usually retrievable, the high frequency of basic and complex structural errors causes difficulty for the reader and restricts the grammar score to a Band 5.

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

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