Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · IELTS Summit Mastery · 2026-10-03

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Write about the following topic:

Many young people choose to take a year out between finishing school and starting university in order to gain work experience or to travel. The experience of non-academic life this offers benefits the individual when they return to education.

To what extent do you agree or disagree?

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

Student answer (Band 5.5)

I think taking an year gap to relax and browse will help you positively for your future studies. You will be able to see how life is like in real life. You will learn how to handle different situations and how to respond them. Traveling will give you a kind of inner peace, knowledge about different cultures, their food, heritage, customs etc. You can explore nature and it's beauty and go to places you have always wanted to. You can make friends from adverse cultures and have fun with them. You will learn how to deal with different kind of people in your journey. It will teach you patience, time management and will also give you ideas about what you want to do in your future life. Practically, you can find out about what your interest is and then make plans for your future ahead. So it is actually helping you shaping your future. On the other hand, getting work experience will make your future life more stable and enhance your resume. It will show you the practical life which everyone has to experience after completing their education. It is not recommended to skip a year for work experience because you can do it as a part-time with your studies. I would personally prefer travelling because work life is stressful, hectic and energy consuming. Although you are making money but sometimes inner peace is better than anything. But travelling can only be possible if you have a large sum of money saved or your parents can handle your expenses.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses the task partially by discussing both travel and work experience, giving an opinion on a gap year. However, the position is not always clearly maintained, as the writer shifts back and forth between travelling and working without fully developing the arguments. For instance, the discussion on travel mentions peace and cultures, such as "Traveling will give you a kind of inner peace, knowledge about different cultures, their food, heritage, customs etc.", but these ideas remain limited and under-developed rather than being fully extended with specific explanations or examples linked back to how they benefit a student returning to education. To move higher, the response needs to present a fully developed position with well-supported arguments for every main idea introduced.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 4.5

There is some basic organisation in the text, but it lacks a clear overall progression. The essay is presented as a single large block of text with virtually no paragraphing, making it difficult for the reader to follow the transitions between ideas, such as moving from travel to work experience. Cohesive devices are minimal or repetitive, often relying on simple sentence openers like "You will" or "You can" throughout the middle section. Paragraphing is not used effectively to separate distinct arguments. To improve, the writer needs to divide the response into clear paragraphs, each with a central topic, and use a wider and more accurate range of cohesive devices to connect ideas logically.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The vocabulary used is limited but minimally adequate to convey the basic points about taking a gap year. The writer attempts some less common phrases, such as "inner peace", "time management", and "work experience", but there are noticeable errors in word choice and phrasing, such as writing "an year gap" instead of "a year gap" and "browse" instead of perhaps relaxing or wandering. There are also slight collocations issues like "adverse cultures" instead of "diverse cultures" and "helping you shaping" instead of "helping you shape". These lexical inaccuracies cause some slight difficulty for the reader. To achieve a higher band, the student must expand their vocabulary range and use less common lexical items with greater precision and fewer errors.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

The response displays a limited range of grammatical structures, relying heavily on simple sentences and repetitive modal patterns such as "You will be able to" and "You can". When the writer attempts more complex sentences, errors appear, such as in "how to respond them" where the preposition is missing. There are frequent errors in articles and verb patterns, such as "an year gap" and "what your interest is". Punctuation and sentence construction are basic, and frequent grammatical errors persist throughout the text, occasionally causing difficulty for the reader. To progress, the writer should incorporate a wider variety of complex sentence forms with greater accuracy and control over grammatical rules and prepositions.

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

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