Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 17 · 2026-09-25

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Nowadays, a growing number of people with health problems are trying alternative medicines and treatments instead of visiting their usual doctor.

Do you think this is a positive or a negative development?

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

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Nowadays, people are having various health problem. It is likely due to the consumption of junk foods and lack of exercises which is widely popular among teenagers. Many people stay on-home doing other activities rather having their checkups. Most likely, people are having alternative medicine in spite visiting the doctor.

Firstly, I will discuss this practice as a negative development. It is obviously the age of science and technology and it provides accurate health conditions regarding individual issues. People are prefering alternative remedies visiting the sadhu's and being fully dependent on them. In this modern era, this habit will likely affect in the future and can even take the life of people. For example, my grandfather told me that there was a practice of dhami-jhakri for the people bitten by snake where people went for treatment due to greed of money. In that case, many people have lost their lives. Moreover, it directly affect the development of a country. The peoples in the country who take alternative medicine are likely to suffer from severe health problem. This will likely have a negative perception toward specialized doctors who are always been providing better facilities to their patients.

Furthermore, this has huge impact on personal life. So the effort should be carried out by concerned authorities in a timely manner. This severe case can be handled by educating public, and by lessening the doctor's charge for low-income individual families.

To sum up, this case definitely doesn't have positive impacts. So, individual must be responsible for their own circumstances. It is better to be far away from such hazardous treatment rather than taking it less-concerning.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses the prompt by taking a clear negative stance on the development of using alternative medicine instead of visiting doctors. The writer presents relevant arguments, such as the dangers of unverified traditional practices and the impact on overall health, supporting these with a personal example regarding 'dhami-jhakri'. However, some ideas are underdeveloped or overly generalized, such as the brief and slightly disjointed mention of solutions in the third paragraph. The position is maintained throughout, fitting the Band 6 descriptors where all parts are addressed, though some aspects are more fully developed than others.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The essay has a recognizable overall structure with an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Paragraphing is attempted, though the division between paragraphs could be managed more logically, as the third paragraph is very brief and feels detached from the main body. Cohesive devices like 'Firstly', 'Moreover', and 'To sum up' are used to connect ideas, but referencing and transitions can be mechanical or slightly confusing, such as the abrupt shift to solutions in paragraph three. This corresponds to the Band 6 descriptor where cohesion is sometimes faulty or mechanical.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The vocabulary used is adequate for the task, allowing the writer to communicate their main ideas about health problems and alternative treatments. There are attempts to use less common vocabulary, such as 'specialized doctors', 'hazardous treatment', and 'greed of money'. However, there are notable word choice and collocation errors, such as 'having various health problem' instead of 'problems', 'people are prefering alternative remedies visiting the sadhu's', and 'take the life of people'. Spelling and word formation are mostly fine, but the inaccuracies place this firmly at Band 5.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, utilizing relative clauses and conditional structures. However, there are frequent grammatical errors throughout the text, such as missing articles ('consumption of junk foods and lack of exercises'), incorrect prepositions ('stay on-home'), and subject-verb agreement issues ('The peoples in the country'). While these errors do not completely impede communication, they are frequent enough to cause some difficulty for the reader, matching the Band 5 descriptors where attempts at complex sentences are often faulty.

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