Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 21 · 2026-10-03

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)

University studies is an integral part of country's education system. Study abroad is a good option for undergraduate students, but it is not financially feasible for everyone and many countries can not afford to provide this benefit to its students. However, work placement should be make mandatory like internship or management trainee programs for undergraduates. The advantages for doing a work placement can not be denied.

Firstly, Undergradute students should be taught industry relevant curricullum and then to polish their talent, their has to be a six weeks internship program by which student know what they are studying and how it can be utilized practicaly. For example, if an undergraduate student of finance background only know the concept of accounting entries but did not have a practicle exposure of how to use this financial knowledge in developing financial accounts, then he/she will either fail in practicle life or took a long span of time in learning financial accounts utilization. For example, ICAP has a mandatory articleship program for two years where they sent students to firms and these firms then send student to professional organizations to teach students how to use their academic knowledge.

Secondly, study abroad is an excellent option. In study abroad, student gain the world wide exposure of their field of study. On the other hand, they got access to the latest inventions and technological advacements in their respective discpline. For example, The AI usage in China has changed the way of people's living. Their creations for the daily usage items from head to toe has altered everyone's life.

To conclude, both work placements and study abroad option are the game changing experience for a student and as a society as well. For this, countries should prepare policies/laws that ease universities to send their student on paid internships like that of ICAP. However, due to financial issues it seems to be not possible for countries to send student for abroad studies.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

The response addresses all parts of the prompt by discussing both studying abroad and work placements, and provides a clear position that work placements are more feasible and beneficial than studying abroad for all students. However, the development of ideas is uneven. While the work placement aspect is supported with a detailed example about ICAP and accounting articleships, the discussion on studying abroad remains somewhat under-developed and relies on broad generalisations rather than deep exploration. The conclusion appropriately summarises the main arguments and offers a coherent final perspective.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

The essay presents a coherent overall arrangement with a clear, logical progression of ideas from introduction to conclusion. Paragraphing is utilised sufficiently to separate main themes, with body paragraphs dedicated to work placements and studying abroad respectively. However, cohesion is at times mechanical or faulty, such as in the abrupt transitions between sentences and repetitive cohesive patterns like 'For example'. Referencing is also occasionally unclear, such as pronoun shifts between singular and plural forms, preventing the text from achieving a higher level of fluid integration.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The vocabulary used is adequate for the task, successfully communicating the writer's ideas about education and professional training. The student attempts less common lexical items, such as 'financially feasible', 'curriculum', and 'articleship', but these are accompanied by noticeable word choice, word form, and spelling errors, such as 'practicle', 'Undergradute', 'curricullum', and 'advacements'. These errors do not seriously impede communication, but they restrict the lexical score, as precision and control over spelling and word forms are inconsistent throughout the response.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The essay demonstrates a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, attempting structures such as conditional and relative clauses. However, there are frequent grammatical errors in verb forms, subject-verb agreement, articles, and prepositions inside grammatical patterns. Examples include 'University studies is', 'work placement should be make mandatory', 'their has to be', 'student know', and 'student for abroad studies'. These errors occur regularly and occasionally cause some difficulty or hesitation for the reader, though the overall meaning remains largely transparent.

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