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

In some parts of the world, people buy far too many clothes.

What are the reasons for this?
How can people be persuaded to reduce the number of clothes they buy?

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

Student answer (Band 5.5)

It is true that fashion status influences many youngster in major countries. To follow fashion trend individuals purchase new and different clothing wear. There are several reasons for this trend. To overcome the situation there are several meassure help to decrease the percentage of people obtain excessive outfits.

There are several reasons the formost one I shall put forword is that excessive use of social media and follow their fashion trend. By this I mean that many people obsessed with new trends going on media platform that introduce new western wear and showing personality change after wearing new clothes that pages on social media encourage people to buy new clothes. Furthermore, competition to maintain status in society. For instance, college going students always compete with each other to maintain fashion icon position in University. Thus they obtain as many casual wear and formal wear to look different.

To There are several measure that help to minimize people purchasing outfits - Firstly the government should impliment heavy tax on clothes beyond purchasing limit. Secondly, Educate youth and their parents that buying unnecessary clothes to maintain status is just waste of money.

All in all, it can be said that because of obsession with social media and trends people bindly purchasing new clothing wear. As well as youth competition for fashion Icon is also another reason of the incresing number of people buy new clothes. However through higher taxes on beyond limit shoping and educating youth can help to minimize the selling of excessive clothing wear.

AI examiner evaluation

CriterionBand
Task Achievement / Task Response6.0
Coherence and Cohesion5.5
Lexical Resource5.0
Grammatical Range and Accuracy5.0
Overall5.5

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

The response addresses both parts of the prompt: reasons why people buy too many clothes and how they can be persuaded to reduce this behavior. The student identifies social media influence and social status as reasons, and suggests heavy taxes and education as solutions. However, the ideas are presented in a somewhat limited and repetitive manner, with underdeveloped examples such as 'college going students always compete with each other'. While a clear position is maintained throughout the essay, the development lacks depth and extension, preventing it from reaching a higher band. Overall, the content meets the fundamental requirements of the task prompt, aligning well with the descriptors for Band 6.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The essay is divided into four paragraphs, providing a coherent overall arrangement. The student attempts to use cohesive devices such as 'Furthermore', 'Thus', and 'Firstly', though some referencing is mechanical and occasionally awkward, as seen in 'To There are several measure that help'. Paragraphing is utilized, but the transition between ideas can feel abrupt. Logical progression is somewhat hindered by repetitive phrasing, and referencing pronouns lack absolute clarity in certain sentences. Despite these noticeable faults in cohesion, the general structure allows the reader to follow the main arguments, making this a solid Band 5.5 performance.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The vocabulary used is adequate for the task, with attempts at less common words like 'excessive', 'obsessed', and 'impliment'. However, there are frequent spelling errors such as 'youngster' instead of youngsters, 'meassure' for measure, 'formost' for foremost, 'forword' for forward, 'bindly' for blindly, and 'incresing' for increasing. Word choices are sometimes unnatural or inaccurate, such as 'clothing wear' and 'shoping'. The lexical range is limited and repetition of phrases like 'new clothes' and 'several reasons' is evident. These errors cause occasional difficulty for the reader, fitting the Band 5 descriptor.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, but control is inconsistent. There are numerous grammatical errors throughout the text, including subject-verb agreement issues ('fashion status influences many youngster'), sentence fragments ('To overcome the situation there are several meassure help'), and missing prepositions or articles. For instance, the sentence 'To There are several measure that help to minimize people purchasing outfits - Firstly the government should impliment...' contains structural incoherence. Although the meaning can generally be extracted, the high frequency of grammatical errors places this response firmly in Band 5.

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

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