Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · IELTS Complete Catalyst · 2026-10-01

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Some people regard work as the most important thing in life and have little interest in anything else. Other people are more enthusiastic about their hobbies and leisure interests than their jobs.

Discuss both these attitudes and give your own opinion.

You should use your own ideas, knowledge and experience and support your arguments with examples and relevant evidence.

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Let's talk about people have different opinions about what is most important in life. Some people believe that work should be their main priority, while others prefer to spend more time on hobbies and leisure activities. In my opinion, both work and hobbies are important, but people should maintain a balance between them.

Let;s start discussing both points of view. Firstly, we discuss people who regard work as more important than hobbies. The main resaon is work give us money and move our life to success. A good work allows people to earn money and facelitate their families. And work give us confidence to achives our future goals. By work we live a professional life. Also a good job represent the good employees. For example many doctors are loyal to their work or responiable for saving the presious life of patients.

Secondly, Lets talk about hobbies, Hobby give us pleasure. Some hobbies are reasons for our enjoyment. It's a source of full enjoyment like circket and football are healthy hobbies. These hobbies make our body strong. Hobbies also decrease our stress level. Moreover, spending too much time at work can negatively affect family and social life. For instance, a person who spends all day at work may have very little time to enjoy activities with their family.

In short, work is necessary for earning money and achieving career goals, while hobbies are important for relaxation and happiness. I believe that people should not focus only on their jobs. A good balance between work, family and leisure activities is the best way to have a satisfying life.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses all parts of the task by discussing both attitudes toward work and leisure, and includes a clear personal opinion in the introduction and conclusion. However, the development of ideas is somewhat limited and uneven across the paragraphs. For instance, the arguments regarding why people prioritize work, such as 'work give us money and move our life to success', are expressed in a somewhat repetitive and under-developed manner rather than being fully extended with deep reasoning. Similarly, the discussion on hobbies touches on pleasure and health benefits like 'circket and football', but these supporting points remain basic. To reach a higher level, the ideas would need to be more fully elaborated and supported with deeper analysis rather than relying on brief, generalised statements.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

The essay presents a coherent overall arrangement with a clear attempt at a four-paragraph structure, including an introduction, body paragraphs for each view, and a conclusion. However, cohesion is sometimes mechanical and features noticeable lapses in logical progression. Conversational openings like 'Let's talk about' and 'Let;s start discussing both points of view' detract from the academic tone and disrupt smooth transitions. While basic cohesive devices such as 'Firstly', 'Secondly', and 'In short' are used to mark the stages of the essay, referencing and linking between sentences occasionally feel abrupt. Paragraphing is present and serves to divide the main topics, but the internal flow of ideas needs to be managed more flexibly to achieve a more natural logical progression throughout.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The vocabulary used is limited and minimally adequate for the task, providing enough terms to communicate the basic ideas about work and hobbies. There are noticeable errors in word choice, word form, and spelling that occasionally distract the reader, such as 'facelitate' instead of 'facilitate', 'achives' instead of 'achieve', 'responiable' instead of 'responsible', 'presious' instead of 'precious', and 'circket' instead of 'cricket'. The student attempts some less common vocabulary items like 'professional life' and 'stress level', but these are accompanied by frequent inaccuracies in collocation and form. To improve, the writer should focus on expanding the range of vocabulary beyond simple terms and paying closer attention to correct spelling and word derivations.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The response demonstrates a limited range of sentence structures, relying heavily on simple sentences alongside a few basic attempts at complex forms. There are frequent grammatical errors involving verb forms, subject-verb agreement, and articles. Examples include 'people have different opinions' where a relative clause or connector is missing, 'work give us money' (lack of agreement), 'A good work' (incorrect use of the article with an uncountable noun), and punctuation errors such as the semicolon typo in 'Let;s'. These frequent errors require some effort from the reader to decode, though meaning is generally preserved. To progress, the writer needs to increase control over basic grammatical rules and incorporate a wider variety of error-free complex sentence structures.

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