Band 6.0 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.0 · IELTS Summit Mastery · 2026-10-06

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 6.0)

The idea of gaining work experience or to travel after finishing school comes to mind of every young individual. This off time can help them in gaining real life experience and the chance to meet different people and when they return to education after a year or two, it highly benefits their studies as they have quite some understanding of the outside world.

I completely agree with this statement. Giving some off time to yourself after finishing school helps in getting real world experience that would eventually help in further studies. By travelling, one can get a better understanding of outside world by interacting with different kinds of people, by trying different things that they have not tried before like deep sea diving, travelling by a train or plane or going to a city that you have long dreamt of. All this helps in relaxing your body and mind that may have been under some stress due the studies at school. All this eventually helps in the future when you goes back to studies.

But, some students can't have some off time after school either because of their financial condition or because they have already been admitted to their dream universities. It completely depends on the individual if they want some time off or they immediately want to attend university. Parents plays some crucial role in making this decision. They can either support their children or can forcefully send them to university that can cause a huge decline in the student's academic performance. Gaining some experience is also quite important along with studies, if you fail to do so you can lead a quite isolated life.

In conclusion, some off time is always quite helpful in defining your future as it helps in understanding the outside world by physically experiencing everything.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

Your response addresses all parts of the task and establishes a clear position agreeing with the prompt. For instance, you state, "I completely agree with this statement," and support this with relevant ideas about real-world experience and relaxation. However, some ideas are under-developed or lack full extension. While you mention travelling and trying deep-sea diving, these examples remain somewhat anecdotal and are not fully linked to how they specifically benefit academic performance upon return. To reach a higher level, you need to extend your supporting arguments more thoroughly, ensuring every main point is deeply explored rather than briefly mentioned.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

Your essay has a coherent overall arrangement with a clear introduction, body paragraphs, and a brief conclusion. You attempt to guide the reader using transition signals such as "In conclusion" and "But, some students can't have..." However, cohesion is sometimes faulty or mechanical. For example, the transition between discussing travel and introducing counter-arguments about financial constraints feels abrupt. Additionally, referencing is not always clear, as seen in the phrase "if you fail to do so," where the precise antecedent is slightly ambiguous. To improve, you should ensure smoother transitions between sentences and paragraphs and use a wider, more natural variety of cohesive devices without over-relying on basic connectors.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

You use an adequate range of vocabulary for the task and successfully attempt some less common items such as "financial condition" and "academic performance." However, there are noticeable word choice and collocation inaccuracies that reveal limitations in your lexical control. For instance, writing "comes to mind of every young individual" is unnatural, and "Parents plays some crucial role" contains a subject-verb agreement error stemming from lexical-grammatical interference. Furthermore, spelling is generally fine, but words like "off time" are colloquial rather than academic. To achieve a higher score, you need to refine your word choices, use more precise academic collocations, and demonstrate a wider range of sophisticated vocabulary with greater accuracy.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

You demonstrate a mix of simple and complex sentence forms throughout your essay, using structures such as conditional and relative clauses. There are, however, some errors in grammar and punctuation that appear consistently. For example, you write "when you goes back to studies," which contains a subject-verb agreement error, and "due the studies," which is missing a preposition. Punctuation and article usage also show occasional lapses, such as missing articles before "outside world." These errors rarely impede communication, meaning the reader can still grasp your overall meaning easily. To move up to the next band, you must produce a higher proportion of error-free sentences and demonstrate better control over complex grammatical structures and agreement rules.

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

Browse more IELTS Writing model answers or get your own writing scored by the same AI examiner.