Band 5.0 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.0 · Cambridge IELTS 14 · 2026-08-31

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 5.0)

In this era, most of the individuals prefer themselves to be self employed instead of being a member of a company or any organization. It could be due to several reasons like work, pressure, time slots, minimal income etc.

Right now students, freshers and other citizens have been facing the problem of unemployment. The major reasons are some of them could not meet the criteria of joining, few of them issue of time management and some other possible reasons. Moreover self based work is becoming common choice of youth because lesser opportunities in their home country. To avoid long millage people prefer to work on their own.

Self employment have many drawbacks which effects the overall repute of the country. A lot of jobs and works can be done by groups in form of organizations. For instance, bank jobs, some the branches of banks have closed in recent years because they could not met the criteria of minimum officers and employees.

Additionally, the school and colleges in our country have been dropping dramatically due to poor coordination and hiring of least number of staff or teachers. This would ultimately results in failure of organization (School), which completely ruin the future of any society. Moreover I must add the advantages of team work, it builds the society stronger , the overall impression of teamwork in an organizations leads towards the success more rapidly than in self work.

in conclusion, the self employment is better choice but not better than to work in any comnay

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.0

The response addresses both parts of the prompt, but the development of ideas is limited and sometimes unclear. While you mention reasons for self-employment, such as unemployment and a desire to avoid long commutes, the explanation is brief and lacks depth. The discussion on disadvantages focuses heavily on the failure of organizations like banks and schools, which is a somewhat tangential argument regarding the societal impact rather than the direct disadvantages to the individual (e.g., lack of job security, irregular income, or lack of benefits). To improve, ensure that your arguments directly answer the prompt and provide more specific, logical examples to support your points.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.0

The essay is organized into paragraphs, but the logical progression of ideas is often disjointed. While you use some cohesive devices like 'Moreover' and 'Additionally', their usage is sometimes mechanical or does not accurately reflect the relationship between sentences. For instance, the transition between the reasons for self-employment and the drawbacks is abrupt. Furthermore, the referencing is occasionally unclear, making it difficult for the reader to follow your line of reasoning. To improve, focus on using a wider range of linking words and ensure that each paragraph has a clear, central topic sentence that connects logically to the previous one.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.0

The vocabulary is generally adequate for the task but lacks the precision and variety required for a higher band. You rely on basic terms and some phrases are used inaccurately, such as 'long millage' (likely meaning 'long commutes') and 'overall repute of the country'. There are also instances of word-choice errors, such as 'self based work' and 'dropping dramatically' when referring to schools. To improve, try to incorporate more topic-specific vocabulary related to employment and business, and pay closer attention to collocations to ensure your word choices sound natural in an academic context.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The essay contains a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, but there are frequent grammatical errors that occasionally impede communication. Common issues include subject-verb agreement (e.g., 'Self employment have', 'This would ultimately results'), article usage, and awkward phrasing. For example, 'most of the individuals prefer themselves to be self employed' is grammatically incorrect. Punctuation is also inconsistent, particularly with the use of commas and capitalization. To improve, focus on mastering basic sentence construction and proofreading for common errors like subject-verb agreement and pluralization, which will help make your writing more accurate and professional.

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

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