Band 5.0 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.0 · Cambridge IELTS 14 · 2026-09-29

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)

Nowadays, an increasing number of people prefer to be self-employed rather than work for a company or organisation. There are several reasons for this trend, although self-employment also has some disadvantages.

First, self-employment has many of the advantages. It helps people to earn a lot of money and become rich. Self-employment provides a comfortable lifestyle and helps us meet our needs easily. There is no flexible timing in the self-employment and earn a lot of money. Money allows us to access better healthcare, which can improve our quality of life.

However, choose company or organisation is even good for some people. Work for a company or organisation make people punctual and regular. It can also be better for some peoples.

Moreover, choose to be self-employed also has some disadvantages. The people who choose to work self-employed, there income is not fixed and their responsibilities are much greater than the other employes like they check all the work in office, command every person how to work and manage their salaries and income. They also faces the financial risk many times. They have no time to spend holidays with their families. They also face the long working hours.

In my opinion, self-employed is best to spend a happy life beacuse money plays an important role in our lives. Without the money, families not buy things that they want, they are not able to spend time outside.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.0

The response addresses the two main parts of the prompt, discussing reasons for choosing self-employment and the potential disadvantages. However, some ideas are underdeveloped and repetitive, such as the multiple mentions of earning a lot of money. Furthermore, the response touches briefly and confusingly upon the benefits of working for a company, which slightly distracts from the core prompt. Crucially, the length requirement has NOT been met; the response contains only 234 words, falling short of the 250-word minimum. This under-length impacts the overall development of ideas. Because the prompt is generally addressed despite the length shortfall and weak development, a band score of 5.0 is appropriate.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.0

The essay is divided into short paragraphs, attempting to structure the introduction, reasons, counterpoints, disadvantages, and conclusion. However, the logical progression is frequently disrupted by abrupt shifts in topic, particularly in the third paragraph which abruptly discusses the benefits of working for an organisation in a very disjointed manner. Cohesive devices are basic and sometimes misused, such as 'First' followed immediately by body paragraphs lacking clear transitional flow. Referencing is also occasionally unclear, as seen in sentences like 'The people who choose to work self-employed, there income is not fixed'. Paragraphing is attempted but ideas within paragraphs are not smoothly linked. Overall, this reflects the characteristics of Band 5.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The vocabulary used is relatively basic and repetitive throughout the response. Phrases like 'earn a lot of money', 'comfortable lifestyle', and 'happy life' are recycled. There are noticeable word-choice and collocation errors, such as 'Work for a company or organisation make people punctual', 'choose company or organisation is even good', and 'they faces the financial risk'. The writer attempts some less common vocabulary items like 'flexible timing' and 'responsibilities', but inaccuracies in form and usage are frequent. While communication is generally maintained, the limited range and persistent lexical errors constrain the score to Band 5.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The essay displays a very limited range of grammatical structures, relying mostly on simple sentences alongside poorly controlled attempts at complex clauses. Grammatical errors are frequent and pervasive. Examples include subject-verb agreement issues ('there income is not fixed', 'families not buy things', 'they also faces'), incorrect verb forms ('Work for a company... make people'), and missing prepositions or articles. Sentences like 'There is no flexible timing in the self-employment and earn a lot of money' contain structural confusions that occasionally cause difficulty for the reader. Given the frequency of errors and limited syntactic variety, a band score of 5.0 is justified.

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