Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 11 · 2026-09-19

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Nowadays, many medical research projects are funded by private companies. In your opinion, do you think that research should be carried by private companies, individuals or government?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Student answer (Band 5.5)

In the current societal landscape, majority of research projects are funded by private authorities. I entirely believe that researches should be carried by government organisations so they can promote education in their nations. This essay will discuss possible reasons and viable measures.

The major reason to support this statement is that it will help to promote privacy and can use researches for welfare of public. In other words, information regarding military research, nuclear bombs and defence could remain private if government will conduct them on their own behalf. Moreover, private medical companies make medicines and they are usually quite costly that poor class people can't afford it. However, if government make medicines, they can provide them at the cheaper prices so every class can afford it. Government should focus on societal needs like reduction in poverty and enviornmental related issues. This will also help to improve quality of air and water without any significant cost.

On other hand, usually private communities do funding for the medical research because many large projects like space projects and long lasting researches, it become difficult for government to pay funds for reseaches due to other expenses authorities need to pay. Private researches may hide the harmful reseaches but surely the government will have transperancy in their work. It is also diificult for government to take long - term risks.

I entirely believe that researches should done by government organisation so public can get to know about correct results of research. Moreover, this will help to cure enviornmental issues and disieases at low cost.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0

The response addresses the prompt by taking a clear position that research should be funded and carried out by government organisations. The writer attempts to cover multiple reasons, such as national security, public welfare, medication costs, and transparency. However, the development of these ideas is somewhat restricted and repetitive, particularly in the conclusion where points are restated rather than extended. While the position is maintained throughout, some arguments—such as the transition from medical research to military and nuclear research—are abrupt and lack fully cohesive logical progression. The response hits the minimum length requirement easily, but the depth of argument prevents it from reaching the higher band levels. Therefore, it fits best into Band 6.0 as it addresses all parts of the task with relevant, albeit somewhat underdeveloped, ideas.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0

The essay displays a generally coherent overall arrangement with a clear paragraph structure consisting of an introduction, two body paragraphs, and a brief conclusion. However, cohesion at the sentence level is at times mechanical or faulty. For instance, the transition 'On other hand' contains a grammatical slip and awkwardly shifts the perspective. Referencing can also be imprecise, as seen with pronoun usage like 'they' and 'it' referring back to ambiguous plural nouns ('private companies', 'researches'). Paragraphing is utilised adequately to separate distinct points, but the internal logical flow within paragraphs occasionally jumps between unrelated concepts, such as mixing military research with pharmaceutical pricing. These issues place the response firmly in Band 6.0 for Coherence and Cohesion.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The student demonstrates an adequate vocabulary range for the task, successfully using terms such as 'societal landscape', 'welfare of public', and 'transparency'. However, there are notable instances of inappropriate word choice and non-standard collocations, such as 'majority of research projects' missing an article ('the majority'), 'private communities' instead of 'private companies', and the plural form 'researches' used repeatedly where the uncountable noun 'research' is required. Spelling errors also occur, such as 'enviornmental' and 'diificult'. While the vocabulary is sufficient to convey the general message, these persistent lexical inaccuracies and spelling slips prevent the score from rising above a Band 5.5.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The essay contains a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, demonstrating some variety in structure with conditional-style clauses ('However, if government make medicines, they can provide them...'). However, grammatical accuracy is inconsistent. There are frequent errors in subject-verb agreement (e.g., 'government make', 'researches should done'), missing articles ('poor class people', 'cheaper prices'), and prepositions. Punctuation issues also appear, such as the hyphenation spacing in 'long - term'. Although these errors do not completely impede communication, they are frequent enough to restrict the response to Band 5.0, as attempts at more complex grammar frequently introduce noticeable errors.

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

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