Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 20 · 2026-09-17

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Write about the following topic:

In many countries, family members work together in their family business.

Do you think family businesses have more advantages than disadvantages?

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

Student answer (Band 5.5)

In the modern era,it is believed that people from different nations run their family business with their parents or siblings has become increasingly common. It develops mutual understanding,cooperation and effective ideas to grow the business. This trend offers numerous benefits,it also presents certain drawbacks.

One primary advantage is that people run their business by own, which reduce the need of hiring additional employees to run the business. Thus, it saves the money and increases the growth of business. Moreover, family members can share different strategies to expand their business. For instance, if family members grow business together, there will be low risk of financial loss.

Despite these benefits, there are notable disadvantages, one major drawback it is disputes which occur between families while running the business which results into separations. For example, some people have different ideas or thinking about things, which might be not accurate according to other person, this creates conflicts among them, which affects their relations and business also.

In conclusion, although working together in family business has several advantages,its drawbacks cannot be neglected. We need to carefully considered about everything before forming a final opinion.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.0

The student addresses the prompt by discussing both the advantages and disadvantages of family businesses, presenting a clear position throughout the response. However, a significant limitation is the word count constraint; the response contains only 189 words, failing to meet the minimum requirement of 250 words. Consequently, the ideas remain somewhat under-developed, particularly in the body paragraphs where examples are brief and lack sufficient elaboration. For instance, the mention of low risk of financial loss is not fully explained. Due to this severe under-length issue, the task response is restricted, aligning closely with Band 5 descriptors.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0

The essay displays a logical overall structure with clear paragraphing, dividing the introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion appropriately. The writer uses basic cohesive devices such as 'One primary advantage', 'Moreover', and 'Despite these benefits' to signal transitions between ideas. However, referencing and cohesion are sometimes faulty or mechanical, as seen in the slightly disjointed sentence structures within the body paragraphs. While there is a discernible flow of ideas, the lack of thorough development hinders overall progression, placing this aspect firmly in the Band 6 category.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.0

The student demonstrates an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully using terms like 'mutual understanding', 'cooperation', and 'separations'. However, there are notable word choice and collocation inaccuracies, such as 'run their business by own' instead of 'run their business on their own' or 'independently', and 'saves the money' instead of 'saves money'. Furthermore, punctuation errors like missing spaces after commas (e.g., 'modern era,it') detract from the presentation. The vocabulary is minimally adequate to convey meaning, fitting the Band 5 descriptor.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, utilizing conditional clauses like 'if family members grow business together, there will be low risk'. However, grammatical accuracy is inconsistent. There are frequent errors in sentence structure and verb agreement, such as 'people from different nations run their family business with their parents or siblings has become', which creates a subject-verb agreement error. Other errors include missing articles and awkward phrasing like 'which might be not accurate'. These errors occasionally cause difficulty for the reader, leading to a Band 5 score.

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