Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer
Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 14 · 2026-09-19
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 and not to work for other organizations and companies.This become trend in recent years and this happened because everyone want to earn more but there are many drawbacks of thid trend.
On one hand, the primary reason why people choose to self-employed not to work for others is that is gives them freedem. Freedom from 9 to 5 when they were self employed they donot have to follow the rule of 9 to 5 they can start their work when they want and they have to obey others and aslo donot have to report others. Furthurmore, self-emplyoed would help them to earn more as compared to what they earn from 9 to 5 job. For instance, many professionals who were doing corporate jobs and they left their jobs and start doing trading and freelancing often report doubling their income.
On the other hand, there are many drawbacks of being self-employed, primary they are not financialy stable like corporates because corporates get their salary on the end of month. They donot have to be worry about the market conditions they will get their salary what ever the market condtion was,but the salary or income of self-employed and business owner deppend on the market conditions.For instance, during unexpected economics crises in Covid-19 many small business ower faces financial losses whereas salaried persons continued to recieve thier monthly income.
In conclusion, while self-employed earns more than the salaried persons but they face sinificant financial risks. Therefore, indivisuals must do job.
AI examiner evaluation
| Criterion | Band |
|---|---|
| Task Achievement / Task Response | 6.0 |
| Coherence and Cohesion | 6.0 |
| Lexical Resource | 5.0 |
| Grammatical Range and Accuracy | 5.0 |
| Overall | 5.5 |
Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0
The response addresses all parts of the prompt by discussing both the reasons why people choose self-employment and the potential disadvantages. The main ideas are relevant and supported with explanations and examples, such as the mention of professionals turning to trading and freelancing, and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on small businesses. However, the development of ideas remains somewhat basic and lacks depth in places, such as the abrupt concluding recommendation that individuals must do a job. The position is clear, but the ideas are not fully extended, placing the response firmly at Band 6.
Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0
The essay has a coherent overall arrangement with clear paragraphing separating the introduction, the reasons, the disadvantages, and the conclusion. Cohesive devices are used to signal transitions, such as 'On one hand,' 'On the other hand,' and 'In conclusion.' However, referencing and cohesion are sometimes faulty or mechanical, as seen in the phrasing 'primary they are not financialy stable' and some run-on sentence structures that lack appropriate conjunctions or punctuation. Paragraph progression is generally logical, but the mechanical nature of the cohesive ties limits the score to Band 6.
Lexical Resource — Band 5.0
The vocabulary used is adequate for the task, attempting some less common items related to employment and economics, such as 'freedem', 'freelancing', 'financially stable', and 'economic crises'. However, there are numerous spelling errors and word-form inaccuracies, including 'thid' for this, 'freedem' for freedom, 'emplyoed', 'financialy', 'ower' for owner, 'recieve', and 'sinificant'. These errors demonstrate a limited control over spelling and word formation, although they do not severely impede overall communication, aligning with the Band 5 descriptors.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0
The student attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, incorporating relative clauses and conditional-like contexts. However, there are frequent grammatical errors throughout the text, such as agreement issues ('everyone want', 'small business ower faces'), missing auxiliary verbs ('they donot have to be worry', 'salaried persons continued to recieve'), and run-on sentences ('This become trend in recent years and this happened because everyone want to earn more'). While meaning is generally recoverable, the high frequency of basic grammatical and punctuation errors prevents the response from reaching a higher band.
See this exact question answered at other band scores — the same prompt compared across bands.
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