Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 20 · 2026-09-29

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Nowadays it's possible for people to buy many products or pay for treatments that help them to look younger.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

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

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Nowadays, individual's spend lot money on expensive treatment and beauty product to look younger. Sometime, those beauty treatment and product has devastating effect on user skin such as skin cancer and rashes. In forth comming paragraphs, I will discuss the bad effects of harmful skin care treatment and routine.

Firstly, regularly using of skin care product has bad influence on the skin those product contains harmful chemicals which is detrimental for human body. people might have to face issue like skin rashes, If they continously use skin product. In addition, some-time they also have to face life threatening disease like skin cancer. For instance, a famous actor in America died due to skin cancer, because he took more than 40 skin surgery.

Apart from that, advertisment of beauty products also plays an important role in buying habit of people. Currently, the advertise on the social media and television focus on the aging and the skin brightening, which tend people to buy those product. Not only but also, these ads always use famous celebrities to influnce people. The Claim in there advertise are always false and misleading. For example, a broadcast of a famous beauty product claims that, there product has a special chemical which eliminate the face wrinkle, however when it was tested in the lab all the claim were wrong.

In Conclusion, aging is a natural process we can't stop it with the beauty products and treatments; however, If it is necessary to use it like in acting profession we should consult doctor before taking it.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

The response addresses the prompt by discussing whether products and treatments to look younger are a good or bad thing, clearly taking a negative stance ("I will discuss the bad effects of harmful skin care treatment"). The ideas are somewhat developed, such as discussing physical side effects and misleading advertisements. However, the arguments lean heavily towards being one-sided, exclusively addressing the negative aspects without balancing the benefits or fully addressing why people use them, leading to a slight over-generalisation. For instance, the claim that a famous actor died because of 40 surgeries is an unsupported and exaggerated example. While all parts of the prompt are addressed, the depth of task response aligns best with a Band 5.5 or Band 6.0 descriptor due to these under-developed and narrow assertions.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The essay demonstrates an overall logical arrangement with a clear introduction, body paragraphs indicated by signposts like "Firstly" and "Apart from that", and a conclusion. However, paragraphing is somewhat mechanical and cohesion is frequently faulty. For instance, transitional phrases like "Not only but also" are used inaccurately, and referencing is occasionally unclear, such as "consult doctor before taking it" where the pronoun antecedent is ambiguous. Progression is evident, but the heavy reliance on basic and sometimes clumsy connectors prevents the response from achieving a higher band. Overall, the organizational structure is adequate for a Band 5.5.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, attempting some less common items such as "devastating effect", "detrimental", and "misleading". However, there are frequent errors in word choice, form, and collocation. For example, "individual's spend lot money" contains plural/possessive errors, "skin surgery" should be "plastic surgeries" or "procedures", and "in there advertise" contains homophone and spelling errors ("their ads"). Despite these noticeable inaccuracies, the vocabulary is minimally adequate and meaning is generally clear, which is characteristic of a Band 5.0.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, including conditional structures ("If they continously use skin product") and relative clauses. However, control of grammar and punctuation is weak, with frequent errors that cause some difficulty for the reader. Issues include subject-verb agreement ("beauty treatment and product has"), tense inconsistency ("in forth comming paragraphs, I will discuss"), missing articles ("in acting profession"), and punctuation errors (comma splices and apostrophe misuse). These persistent errors place the response firmly in the Band 5 category.

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

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