Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 20 · 2026-09-30

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

It is important for children, young adults, working people and the retired to have at least one hobby.

What's your opinion about this?

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

Student answer (Band 5.5)

It is believed that, all the people including children,youth, workers and old aged have atlest one hobby in their life. Allthough this viewpoint comes with certain pros and cons, I believe that hobbies are very essential in life.

To begin with, there are many advantages present to have hobbies in life. Firstly, laisure activities provide the both happiness and thrill. For example, people who plays games are competative and happy in their life. Secondly, It can be helpful to develop certein skills such as team work, leadership and learn from setbacks. For example, the games like cricket and football teach the skills like time management and team work. Moreover, hobbies give perpose of life to working community and retired peoples. For instance, activities can reduce the stress from daily workload, while old age groups can stay engaged in activities to avoid emptyness.

On the other hand, spending excessive time on hobbies also have certain drawbacks. To begin with, the activity like mobile and video games can become addiction to childrens and young adults. Further, some activites like bunjee jumping and zipline can give fun and thrill, but it can aslo be dengerous and cause injuries. In much the same way, spending time on laisure hobbies can cause imbalance in personal and professional life.

To sum up, Although the hobbies come with different advantages and disadvantages, I believe that it is very essential to have atleast one hobby in life for everyone. In addition, by setting up some rules and boundries we can also avoid the negetive impect of it on life.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.5

The student addresses all parts of the prompt by discussing the necessity of hobbies across all age groups and presents a clear position throughout the response. The ideas are generally relevant, covering benefits such as happiness, skill development, and stress reduction, alongside drawbacks like addiction and danger. However, some ideas remain slightly under-developed or prone to over-generalization, such as the claim that 'people who plays games are competative and happy in their life.' This places the response comfortably at Band 6.5, as it addresses all parts of the task with clear overall relevance, though the support and extension of ideas lack the thorough depth required for a Band 7.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

The essay has a coherent overall arrangement with a clear introduction and conclusion, and the writing is paragraphed sufficiently and appropriately. Cohesive devices are used to signal progression, such as 'To begin with,' 'Secondly,' 'Moreover,' and 'On the other hand.' However, referencing and cohesion are at times somewhat mechanical or faulty. For instance, transitional phrases are heavily relied upon in a formulaic manner ('To begin with' is repeated twice). Additionally, referencing is occasionally imprecise, as seen in the phrase 'the negetive impect of it on life.' These features demonstrate the characteristics of Band 6, where cohesion is sometimes mechanical and referencing is not always clear.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The student demonstrates an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, attempting less common items such as 'competative,' 'emptyness,' and 'boundries.' However, there are numerous spelling errors throughout the text, including 'atlest' instead of 'at least', 'Allthough', 'laisure', 'certein', 'perpose', 'peoples', 'childrens', 'activites', 'bunjee', 'zipline', 'aslo', 'dengerous', 'negetive,' and 'impect.' These lexical and spelling errors are noticeable and occasionally impede readability, although meaning remains clear. This performance aligns with Band 5.0, where noticeable spelling and word-choice errors are present and may cause some difficulty for the reader.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The response employs a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, demonstrating some control over structure through the use of subordinate clauses (e.g., 'It is believed that...'). However, there are frequent grammatical errors, particularly with subject-verb agreement and article usage, such as 'all the people including children,youth, workers and old aged have atlest one hobby,' 'provide the both happiness,' 'people who plays games,' and 'It can be helpful.' Punctuation and pluralisation errors also occur frequently ('retired peoples'). Because the errors are frequent and occasionally cause difficulty for the reader while simple structures are managed with better accuracy, a Band 5.0 is appropriate.

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

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