Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 11 · 2026-09-22

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Some people claim that not enough of the waste from homes is recycled. They say that the only way to increase recycling is for governments to make it a legal requirement.

To what extent do you think laws are needed to make people recycle more of their waste?

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

Student answer (Band 5.5)

“Some argue that the only way to increase household recycling is to make it a legal requirement, while others believe alternative measures are sufficient. The essay is all about that the should government have to take any step or not.

As per my prospective, I'm not fully concur with the statement. We unable to sourly say that the number of people definitely obey the rules, if by chance legislature makes any law in favor of that. In country we are leaving, we don't have the type of environment that every person follows the rules and regulations.

I have an example, In present time our country developed a lot but the people of our country don't even have basic civic sense, I sow many people throwing rubbish and garbage on roads or streets instead of dustbins. They don't care about the environment and nature. Due to these there is large quantity of waste remain without recycling and harms the earth and the life of fauna and flora around that area.

In addition, making of laws for this, we have to implement and improve some basic things in our education system. We have to teach our social responsibilities to our children from their childhood, which results in that when they grow up they able to get the sence of social responsibility and they make there surrounding neat and clean.

for example, In countries like Japan and China the education institutes and pre-schools teach their students basic civic sense and how to behave in society like Students clean their classes themself which trane their brain to keep surrounding clean.

In conclusion, making law for anything is not the way to treat any problem we have to correct the baseline for that.

AI examiner evaluation

CriterionBand
Task Achievement / Task Response6.0
Coherence and Cohesion5.0
Lexical Resource5.0
Grammatical Range and Accuracy5.0
Overall5.5

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0

The response addresses the prompt by discussing whether legal requirements are necessary to increase recycling, presenting a clear personal position that laws alone are insufficient and that education on social responsibility is more important. The ideas are relevant and supported with an example from Japan and China. However, the introduction contains a redundant and somewhat informal overview sentence ('The essay is all about that the should government have to take any step or not'), and the reasoning occasionally lacks depth due to expression limitations. The position is maintained throughout, fitting the Band 6 descriptor well.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.0

The essay displays a coherent overall arrangement with basic paragraphing used to separate the introduction, body points, and conclusion. However, cohesive devices are sometimes faulty or mechanical, and referencing is not always clear (e.g., 'Due to these there is large quantity...'). Transitional phrases are attempted, such as 'In addition' and 'In conclusion', but the overall logical flow is hindered by awkward phrasing and lack of smooth transitions between sentences. This corresponds to the Band 5 to 6 range, leaning towards a Band 5 due to the noticeable disruptions in flow.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.0

The student uses a limited vocabulary with noticeable errors that cause some difficulty for the reader, such as 'sourly' instead of 'solely', 'leaving' instead of 'living', 'sow' instead of 'saw', and 'sence' instead of 'sense'. While there is an attempt to use less common vocabulary like 'legislature' and 'civic sense', the frequent word-choice errors, incorrect spelling, and lack of precision place this performance firmly at Band 5.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The text contains a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, but attempts at complex structures are frequently marred by serious grammatical errors. Examples include 'We unable to sourly say', 'the people of our country don't even have basic civic sense, I sow many people throwing', and 'when they grow up they able to get the sence'. Punctuation and subject-verb agreement issues are widespread ('the should government have', 'there is large quantity of waste remain'). These frequent errors consistently impede communication, aligning with Band 5.

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

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