Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 21 · 2026-09-16

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

It is very common for people to change both their habits and their opinions as they get older.

Do you agree or disagree?

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

Student answer (Band 5.5)

It is often argued that people tend to change their personalities with growing age. I strongly agree with this statement as I believe while getting older, we gain alot of life experiences which certialy affects our choices and thinking.

To begin with, when a person is young, he is attracted more to fun and adventourous things. To elaborate, youngsters like to enjoy activities which bring thrill to their lives. In adulthood, people see life with different prospectives and their opinions are quite different from their elders. For an instance, I have seen my elsder cousin. He used to be very naughty and fun loving. In his young age, he was very spontaneous. However, there was a tremendous change in his personality after the age of 30. Now, he is more mature and wiser and plan before taking any action.

Secondly, there is no denying that a person get a lot of exposure later in life and get influenced from their surroundings.. There are different phases of life in which we meet new people everyday. In my opinion, even our company and friends from different ethnicity also impact our habits and opinions.

To summarize, I firmly believe that exposure and life-experiences bring a lot of changes in ones's life including their thinking and lifestyle sense . Also, people at old age wants their life more comfortable rather than exciting. They find peace with simple life.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.5

The response addresses the prompt by clearly stating a position that people change their habits and opinions as they get older, supporting this with reasons regarding life experiences and exposure. However, the development is somewhat limited in places, and the example regarding the cousin is relatively brief. Furthermore, the response falls short of the 250-word minimum, containing only 234 words. This under-length impacts the overall task response as the ideas cannot be fully extended. Consequently, the task achievement is constrained to a Band 5.5.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0

The essay is organized into logical paragraphs, using basic cohesive devices such as 'To begin with', 'Secondly', and 'To summarize' to guide the reader through the points. While the overall progression is clear, referencing and cohesion are at times mechanical or slightly repetitive. Paragraphing is used appropriately to separate different arguments, but the internal connections between sentences could be more sophisticated. This aligns well with the descriptors for Band 6.0.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, attempting some less common phrases such as 'spontaneous', 'exposure', and 'life-experiences'. However, there are notable spelling errors ('alot', 'certialy', 'adventourous', 'prospectives', 'elsder', 'ones's') and slight awkwardness in word choice ('lifestyle sense'). While these errors do not severely impede communication, they restrict the vocabulary score to a Band 5.5.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.5

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, such as conditional and relative structures ('I believe while getting older, we gain...'). However, there are frequent grammatical errors throughout the text, including subject-verb agreement issues ('people at old age wants') and incorrect prepositions or articles. Despite these inaccuracies, the meaning remains mostly clear to the reader, which fits the Band 5.5 criteria.

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

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