Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 21 · 2026-09-23

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

All university undergraduate courses should include a period of time spent studying abroad or doing a work placement.

Do you think the advantages of this would outweigh the disadvantages?

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

Student answer (Band 5.5)

The undergraduate courses of all universities should include a period of time spent studying abroad or doing a work placement in abroad. I believe that this strategy would help students gaining a lot of knowledge and experience.

Admitedly, according to my knowledge all universities should adopt this concept as it has lots of benefit in many aspects. Firstly, it would help students gain a lot of knowledge relative to his field. While with other people of different would help to increase his skills. In addition to this, working in new atmosphere would increase their personality and working with different aspects of field can improve their teamwork ability. After this, working in different places related to their field can improve their tolerance behaviour with their mates. This results in a collaboration which is essential in a progress of any field. For example, a firm had accountants which look after the solutions of audit. Supposed, they are sent to abroad to learn and improve their ability of ability, that's results in a lot of progress. They got a lot of opportunities in their field as they have increased their skills while, working with others.

Similarly, with many advantages of working abroad also has few disadvantages. This includes that while spending a time in abraod results in a stressful thing. As different countries have different perspective according to their field and their syllabus of course. Also including to this, they have their own strategies with their development. Adding an example to this is the field of agriculture, developed countries have their own techniques according to their technology but, these technologies are not available in under-developed countries. So, this is one of the disadvantage according to my appraoch but, this approach did not outweigh its advantages.

In conclusion, i strongly believe that advantages of spending time in studying abroad or doing a work placement

can outweigh its few disadvantges. So , I conclude that all unversities should adopt this strategy.

AI examiner evaluation

CriterionBand
Task Achievement / Task Response5.5
Coherence and Cohesion5.5
Lexical Resource5.5
Grammatical Range and Accuracy5.0
Overall5.5

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses the prompt by discussing both the advantages and disadvantages of including study abroad or work placements in undergraduate courses, ultimately taking a clear position that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Ideas are presented, such as skill acquisition, teamwork, and cross-cultural challenges, but they often lack deep extension and specific development. For instance, the example about accounting firms is somewhat vague and underdeveloped, and the mention of agricultural technology touches on a relevant point but is not fully articulated. The response covers all parts of the task as required for Band 6, though some areas remain slightly unclear or repetitive.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The essay displays a coherent overall arrangement with a clear introduction and conclusion. Paragraphing is utilised, though paragraph boundaries and internal links could be managed more effectively. Cohesive devices are sometimes mechanical or awkwardly phrased, such as 'Admitedly', 'In addition to this', and 'After this'. Referencing is occasionally confusing, as seen in pronoun shifts and unclear noun-pronoun agreement ('While with other people of different would help to increase his skills'). Logical progression is present, but abrupt transitions and repetitive structuring prevent the text from reaching a higher band.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The student demonstrates an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, attempting some less common items such as 'collaboration', 'perspective', and 'under-developed'. However, there are numerous word choice, spelling, and collocation errors throughout the response, including 'Admitedly' (admittedly), 'in abroad' (abroad), 'new atmosphere' (new environment), and 'appraoch' (approach). Furthermore, awkward phrasing such as 'tolerance behaviour' impacts precision. While communication is not severely impeded, these frequent lexical inaccuracies keep the score at Band 5.5.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, demonstrating some capability with subordinate clauses. However, grammatical accuracy is weak, with frequent errors in punctuation, article usage, subject-verb agreement, and sentence construction. Examples include 'The undergraduate courses of all universities should include... in abroad', 'Supposed, they are sent to abroad', and 'that's results in a lot of progress'. Run-on structures and sentence fragments frequently disrupt the flow. Because errors are frequent and occasionally cause some difficulty for the reader, the performance aligns with Band 5.0.

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