Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 11 · 2026-10-01

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)

Currently, various medical research projects are funded by private companies. In my opinion, research should be carried by irrespective of private companies, individuals or government as they provide valuable innovations and one entity alone cannot bear the responsibility of it.

Research projects carried out by individuals, government or private companies provide us with new innovations and technologies as research is an essential part to acquire new technologies. New technologies and human socities are constantly advancing and evolving due to the hard works of our scientists and research projects play a pivotal role in improving our life. Modern medical facilities are the results of our continuous research and without the research projects, it would have been impossible to increase our life expectancy and quality of life. For example, human societies suffered heavily with deadly diseases like cholera and polio and because of the modern medicines, these diseases are now completely eradicated.

One entity alone cannot bear the responsibility of research projects as research projects are the fundemental core of our survival. Without research projects, human societies cannot sustain as creativity will be plummeted down and no new innovation or technology will come to improve our life. Moreover, research projects should be carried out by everyone irrespective of government or private companies and every single individual should contribute their share to the research projects. For instance, other than universities, many independent research labs have been established and these labs are contributing a very large portion of their share in the research sector.

In conclusion, private companies funds many research projects and in my opinion, research projects should be carried out by government, private companies, individuals and all instead of just one entity.

AI examiner evaluation

CriterionBand
Task Achievement / Task Response5.5
Coherence and Cohesion5.5
Lexical Resource5.5
Grammatical Range and Accuracy5.5
Overall5.5

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response partially addresses the prompt by expressing an opinion that research should be carried out by a combination of government, private companies, and individuals. However, the position is not always entirely clear or well-developed throughout the essay. While the writer attempts to provide reasons, such as the scale of human advancement and historical disease eradication like cholera and polio, these ideas tend to be repetitive and lack sufficient extension. The arguments are somewhat generalised, and the distinction between the roles of the different entities requested in the prompt is blurred. To reach a higher level, the writer needs to present a more developed, well-supported stance that clearly evaluates the specific contributions and responsibilities of each suggested entity rather than treating them uniformly.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The essay displays some overall organization with a recognizable introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. However, there is a lack of clear overall progression, and the transitions between paragraphs feel somewhat mechanical. Cohesive devices are sometimes inaccurate or repetitive, as seen in the frequent restarting of thoughts with phrases like 'research projects' and 'new technologies'. Paragraphing is attempted, but the internal logical flow of the body paragraphs suffers from circular reasoning and redundancy, making the progression difficult to follow at times. Referencing is also occasionally unclear, such as the pronoun use referring back to broad concepts. To improve, the writer should use a wider variety of cohesive ties more naturally and ensure that each paragraph builds logically upon the previous one without repeating the same core assertions.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The vocabulary used is minimally adequate for the task, demonstrating an attempt to incorporate less common lexical items such as 'eradicated', 'pivotal role', and 'independent research labs'. However, there are noticeable lexical inaccuracies and awkward word choices, such as 'carried by irrespective of', 'human socities', 'fundemental core', and 'creativity will be plummeted down'. These errors indicate a limited control of word formation, collocation, and spelling. While communication is generally maintained despite these flaws, the vocabulary remains somewhat restricted and repetitive. To achieve a higher band, the writer must expand their lexical range, demonstrate more precise word choices, and minimize errors in word form and spelling.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

The writing exhibits a limited range of grammatical structures, relying heavily on simple and repetitive complex sentence forms. Attempts at complex sentences are frequently marred by structural errors, faulty preposition use, and awkward phrasing, such as 'research should be carried by irrespective of private companies' and 'funds many research projects' where subject-verb agreement is affected. There are frequent errors in punctuation and articles throughout the text, which occasionally cause difficulty for the reader. Although the meaning can generally be deciphered, the frequency of grammatical slips prevents the writing from achieving a higher level of accuracy and control. To progress, the writer should practice using a wider variety of complex sentence patterns while ensuring strict adherence to basic grammar and agreement rules.

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

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