Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 14 · 2026-08-06

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Nowadays many people choose to be self-employed, rather than to work for a company or organisation.

Why might this be the case?

What could be the disadvantages of being self-employed?

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

Student answer (Band 5.5)

In this well-educated world, everyone knows the pros and cons of working for someone.Owing to this, instead of working in the under pressure of company or organisations they are preferring to become a owner in other words self-employed.Therefor, the accurate reasons and negative outcomes behind this phenomenon will be demonstrated in forthcoming paragraphs with extraordinary examples and at the end the sumps will be drawn.

To commence with, the adequate cause of this trend is the uncountable money.To exemplify this, people are believing that own business helps us to increase the opportunity of earning at convenient ways which cannot be experienced by working for companies as the salaries are fixed.Apart from this, the workload from organisations extreme stressful for people and some time provides diseases especially depression.To prevent this circumstances people are accepting to become self-employed.

However, there are number of disadvantages of this practise.The paramount issue is requiring unpredictable taxes to pay.To elaborate it, if we will become owner of businesses rather than workers of companies, we should pay bundle of money for various tax or licences such as business tax, employment tax , alcohol permission and so on.Which are too expansive compared to the incomes.For an example, 36% of tax business owner needs to invest to run shops and 20% of money taken by authorisations to sell illegal items.Moreover, compared to the employments there are plenty of burden to become self-employed as we have to maintain each and everything by our self which gives feeling like frustration.

In conclusion, although being self-employe has certain advantages but the negative effects of it is surprising.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.5

The response addresses both parts of the prompt: reasons for self-employment and the disadvantages. However, the development of ideas is limited. The reasons provided (money and stress) are somewhat generic and lack depth. The discussion of disadvantages is hampered by unclear examples, such as the mention of '20% of money taken by authorisations to sell illegal items,' which is confusing and irrelevant to the prompt. While the position is clear, the supporting arguments are often under-developed, and the conclusion is very brief, failing to adequately summarise the main points discussed in the body paragraphs.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0

The essay is organised into paragraphs, but the flow between and within them is often mechanical. While cohesive devices like 'To commence with,' 'Apart from this,' and 'In conclusion' are used, they are sometimes used incorrectly or feel forced. The referencing is occasionally unclear, and the progression of ideas is hindered by awkward phrasing. For instance, the transition between the benefits and the drawbacks lacks a smooth logical link. Paragraphing is present, but the final paragraph is underdeveloped and does not effectively wrap up the essay's argument.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The vocabulary is generally adequate for the task but lacks precision and sophistication. There are several instances of awkward word choices and non-standard collocations, such as 'sumps will be drawn' (likely meaning 'conclusions'), 'under the pressure of company,' and 'unpredictable taxes.' Some phrasing is repetitive, and the use of 'illegal items' in the context of business taxes is a significant lexical error that obscures the intended meaning. The range is sufficient to convey basic ideas, but the lack of control over more complex or academic vocabulary limits the score.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.5

The essay contains a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, but there are frequent grammatical errors throughout. Issues include missing articles ('become a owner'), incorrect verb forms ('people are believing'), and punctuation errors (missing spaces after periods). Subject-verb agreement is inconsistent, and some sentences are structurally awkward, such as 'Which are too expansive compared to the incomes.' While the meaning is generally understandable, the frequency of errors is high enough to cause some distraction for the reader and indicates a lack of control over complex structures.

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

Browse more IELTS Writing model answers or get your own writing scored by the same AI examiner.