Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 14 · 2026-09-16

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)

Nowadays many people choose to be self employed, rather than to work for a company or organization, because they just simply want a flexibility in life. Flexibility can be in terms of working hours work from home or even work at the place of your own choice. Apart from flexibility self employement gives them more opportunities to grow, people can utilize their own efforts to benifiti their future in long term rather than putting efforts to help run someone else's organization with even less money and more rules and regulations. People choose being self employed mostly because they don't want to stuck in a 9-5 job rather they want to work according to their needs and their will, for example if a person is starting his own clothing brand rather than working in a textile company they primarily focus on getting things done in their own way and to become more successful, they simply want their success graph to grow exponentially rather than increasing gradually. Self employement have many disadvantages like there's much more risk in self employement as compared to working for someone else. there's always a risk that a self employed person might fail in his plan but an organization employed person must always get his salaray as long as he is a part of that specific organization. Self employement in many cases require more experience in practical field. Some other disadvantages are it requires a solid plan, you might get alot and nothing in many cases. For example let's compare a self employed with an employe of an organization, Alex is self employed and David is an employee of an organization, Alex is trying to build a marketing agency while David is a software developer in an organization. Alex needs to focus on finding clients for marketing agency for that he needs to create several strategies and a proper plan, while david just have to do what he's asked for. David will always get the same of amount of salary every month without having to worry about anything, which means no risk no extra reward, but david is not sure whether he's gonna earn in millions or being in debts by the end of the month which meand high risk high reward, so it totally depend upon the person whether he/she wanna play safe or go for a high risk option

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0

The response addresses all parts of the prompt, exploring reasons for choosing self-employment, such as flexibility and higher earning potential, alongside disadvantages like financial risk and the need for a solid plan. Ideas are extended with relevant examples, such as comparing a clothing brand startup with a corporate textile job, and contrasting characters like Alex and David. While some points are slightly repetitive, the overall position is clear and well-supported throughout. The content is fully developed and meets the expectations of a Band 6.5 to 7.0, ultimately fitting comfortably into Band 6.5 due to slight generalisations and under-development in certain areas.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5

The essay displays a coherent overall arrangement with a clear progression of ideas from reasons to disadvantages, followed by a comparative example. However, cohesion is sometimes faulty or mechanical. The lack of standard paragraph breaks makes the entire text read as a single massive block of writing, which severely impacts paragraphing. Cohesive devices are used, but punctuation errors and run-on sentences disrupt the flow. For example, sentences such as 'Self employement have many disadvantages like there's much more risk...' lack proper structural separation. Referencing is occasionally unclear, bringing the essay down to a Band 5.5 in this category.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The student demonstrates an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully attempting less common items such as 'exponentially', 'marketing agency', and 'financial risk'. However, there are notable spelling errors ('employement', 'benifiti', 'salaray', 'depend') and word choice inaccuracies ('stuck in a 9-5 job' instead of stuck; 'practical field' instead of practical experience). Furthermore, repetition of words like 'flexibility', 'self-employed', and 'organization' limits the lexical score. Because communication is not impeded despite these flaws, the vocabulary performance aligns well with Band 6.0.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.5

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, utilizing conditional structures and relative clauses (e.g., 'if a person is starting his own clothing brand...'). However, grammatical accuracy is noticeably hindered by run-on sentences, comma splices, and punctuation neglect. For instance, 'David will always get the same of amount of salary every month without having to worry about anything, which means no risk no extra reward...' contains string-along clauses connected only by commas. Subject-verb agreement errors also appear, such as 'Self employement have'. These frequent structural and punctuation errors place the grammar firmly in Band 5.5.

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