Band 5.0 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.0 · Cambridge IELTS 14 · 2026-09-18

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)

its a great news that people want to be self employed all around the world rather than choosing a company to work with.

my opinion is that its much better for anyone to start their own startups rather tha to join others work station/company.their is few reasons behind it e.g

the main reason is that todays genration whichwe call as gen Z are much more stright forward then the millaniels they avoid the toxic corrporate culture and and don't want to be controlled by someone .

the other reason its better to be self empoloyed rather than to work for anyone else because todays genration understand that when we work for someone else we always face the deadlines and work pressure whereas when we are working for ourself we don't do work to free ourselve rather than we do work with more courage and work until we are fully exausted because we want to become successfull than others

But yes their are some points to be noted for the person whos's working in an organization or company that

the person whos working in a company will no longer face the pressure of its investment like when he works for the company the company owner is facing all the risk. where as he only work for respective work hours and leave the office after clock out than he/she can enjoys the remainning time with their family or work on improving their skills or can go to gym to to maintain their health or can hangout etc

whereas in own the bussines or to be self employed one have to manage all the task without looking at the clock

sometime the respective person bears all the work pressure by themselve but it also give freedom to the person

so i will always choose to be self employed rather to work under an organization

AI examiner evaluation

CriterionBand
Task Achievement / Task Response5.5
Coherence and Cohesion5.0
Lexical Resource5.0
Grammatical Range and Accuracy4.0
Overall5.0

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.5

The response addresses all parts of the task by discussing the reasons why people choose self-employment, such as avoiding toxic corporate culture and escaping strict deadlines, as well as the disadvantages, including the burden of financial risk and endless working hours. A clear position is maintained throughout, concluding that self-employment is preferable despite the challenges. However, the ideas are somewhat informally expressed and could be more fully extended with more specific real-world examples rather than broad generalizations about Gen Z and millennials. Nevertheless, the core requirements of the prompt are sufficiently met, earning a band score of 6.0.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.0

The essay demonstrates a basic logical progression, moving from the reasons for self-employment to the disadvantages and finally a personal conclusion. However, the overall cohesion is heavily compromised by a complete lack of standard capitalization, punctuation, and proper paragraphing. The text runs together with informal markers like 'But yes' and 'so i will always choose', lacking sophisticated cohesive devices and clear structural signposts. Paragraph breaks are messy and do not clearly separate distinct ideas. This places the organizational control at a band 5.0 level, as the lack of punctuation and mechanical flow make the progression harder to follow than expected at a higher band.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.0

The vocabulary used is generally adequate for conveying basic ideas about work culture, such as 'self employed', 'deadlines', 'work pressure', and 'financial risk'. However, there are numerous spelling and word-choice errors, including 'corrporate', 'millaniells', 'empoloyed', 'exausted', and 'bussines'. The range is quite limited, relying heavily on conversational and repetitive phrasing rather than precise academic or professional collocations. While the meaning is generally recoverable despite the errors, the frequent spelling inaccuracies and lack of sophisticated lexical items restrict the vocabulary score to a band 5.0.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 4.0

The student attempts some complex sentence forms, such as clauses introduced by 'whereas' and 'when we work for someone else'. However, the grammatical accuracy is severely undermined by the absence of capital letters at the beginnings of sentences, missing apostrophes ('theres', 'whos'), run-on sentences, and punctuation failures throughout the entire response. While simple structures are sometimes handled, frequent structural slips and punctuation errors cause noticeable difficulty and distraction for the reader. Therefore, the grammatical control aligns closely with the descriptors for a band 4.0.

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

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