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, the majority of the popoulation prefer to do their own work either as a freelancer or starting a business rather than doing work for a company or organization. There are many factors contributing to increasing this perspective include an independence in decesion power and flexibilty in working hours.in contrast to this, there are mainy disadvantages associated with self-employment.

One of the primary reasons which makes the people's mind in this way is the decesion power independency. Employers have to seek for a permission of the company's CEO before innitiating any new task. In addition workers are required to wait for the approval of their organization to do something for the betterment of the company, In fact, workers are considered as slaves during their working hours and are not allowed to leave thier seats without the premission of the head,

Another factor which contributes to the rapid acceptance of this idea is felxibilty in working hours. The freelancer can do work on a time which perfectly aligned with his timetable and suitability. Furthermore, it can provide relief to a person that gets pressurized by fixed working hours.

Despite having considerable reasons to follow self-employment, It also have alot of adverse effects. The stability and maturity in decesion powers generally comes with the group work rather than freelancing or others. People can get the motivational remarks after the completion of their tasks which can boost their encouragement and confidence to achieve their future goals more efficiently. Although, people doing self-work are more fllexible in their wroking hours, it can also effect their stability of monthy or annual income in case of natural disasters, In fact, in post covide era, self employers are facing more challenges in their financial stability than others.

Overall, self work have alot of understanbable reasons however its draw backs are also there.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.5

The response addresses all parts of the task by discussing both the reasons why people choose self-employment (such as decision-making independence and flexible working hours) and the disadvantages (such as financial instability, particularly post-COVID, and a lack of collaborative group support). A clear position is maintained throughout the essay. However, some ideas are slightly over-generalized or supported with overly extreme assertions, such as claiming workers are 'considered as slaves.' Overall, the content covers the prompt well and the ideas are sufficiently developed to satisfy the requirements for a Band 6.5 or 6, fitting comfortably at Band 6.0 due to the tendency toward sweeping generalisations.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5

The essay has a coherent overall arrangement and follows a logical four-paragraph structure comprising an introduction, two body paragraphs exploring reasons, one body paragraph addressing disadvantages, and a brief conclusion. Paragraphing is used appropriately to separate distinct ideas. However, cohesion is sometimes faulty or mechanical, as seen with abrupt transitions like 'in contrast to this, there are mainy disadvantages associated with self-employment' and spelling/punctuation glitches at sentence boundaries (e.g., 'working hours.in contrast'). Referencing is mostly clear, but the logical progression between sentences occasionally feels disjointed due to phrasing issues, placing this performance at Band 6.0.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The writer demonstrates an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, attempting less common terms such as 'freelancer', 'financial stability', and 'adverse effects'. However, there are frequent spelling errors ('popoulation', 'decesion', 'flexibilty', 'innitiating', 'felxibilty', 'thier', 'premission', 'fllexible', 'wroking', 'monthy', 'covide', 'understanbable') and occasional awkward word choices or collocations like 'self work' and 'self employers'. While these errors do not completely impede communication, their frequency prevents the score from reaching a higher band, making Band 5.5 the most appropriate evaluation.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.5

The student uses a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, including subordinate clauses ('The freelancer can do work on a time which perfectly aligned with his timetable') and conditional or concessive structures ('Despite having considerable reasons to follow self-employment, It also have alot of adverse effects'). However, there are frequent grammatical and punctuation errors throughout the text, such as subject-verb agreement issues ('It also have alot', 'self work have alot'), incorrect capitalization ('It'), and missing articles. These errors occur regularly but rarely impede the overall clarity of the message, which aligns well with the Band 5.5 descriptors.

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

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