Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 15 · 2026-10-02

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

In some countries owning a home rather than renting one is very important for people. Why might this be the case? Do you think this is a positive or negative situation?

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Owing a property is the most secure feeling of every indiviual. In the circumstances of emergency people owing any valuable thing in terms of money can make him feel less vulnerable. Housing is one of such thing that makes people safe. Renting and owing a house is entirely an indiviual choice.

Firstly, owing a house is a positive situation for almost every people. They can do any kind alteration in their home without the fear of anyone. They can spend money easily on any change in infrastructure of their own home which may get wasted in the rented home when you leave. So, owing a house also developes an emotional connectivity for a person, he feel it a safe place for his relaxation. They can live freely without any obligations of the house owner. While there are some drawbacks of owing a house like you have to afford the maintainence of your house which incase of rent is entirely the houseowner responsibillity.

Contrastly, renting a house might be a good option for some people. Getting on to some point, citizens who have usual job transfers, they cannot have houses in all of their cities in which they transferred so, renting is a good option for them. But it can be problematic in a way that you have to leave the house whenever the house owner ask. Furthermore, renting makes the people difficult to adjust to new places. They will have to shift their substantial luggage which makes them uneasy.

In the end, owing a house and renting a house have its own pros and cons. It is entirely an indiviual choice whether to live in their own home or on a rent.

AI examiner evaluation

CriterionBand
Task Achievement / Task Response5.5
Coherence and Cohesion5.5
Lexical Resource5.0
Grammatical Range and Accuracy5.0
Overall5.5

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses all parts of the prompt by discussing why owning a home is important and sharing an opinion on whether this is positive or negative. However, the ideas remain somewhat limited and under-developed. For instance, the point about emotional connectivity and alterations is introduced but not fully extended with strong examples. Your position is generally understandable, such as stating that owning a house is a positive situation and renting has drawbacks like job transfers, but the arguments lack depth and tend to generalise quickly without strong supporting evidence. To move higher, you need to develop your arguments more fully, providing detailed explanations and clearer justifications for your views on homeownership versus renting.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

There is some basic organisation in the essay, with paragraphs used to separate different ideas, such as the benefits of owning a home versus the pros and cons of renting. However, there is a lack of clear overall progression from beginning to end. Cohesive devices are sometimes inaccurate or awkward, as seen in transitions like 'Contrastly' instead of 'In contrast' or 'On the other hand'. Furthermore, referencing is occasionally unclear, such as shifting pronouns between 'they', 'you', and 'he' within the same context, which disrupts the logical flow. To improve, you should ensure smoother transitions between sentences and paragraphs, maintain consistent pronoun use, and build a more logical progression of ideas throughout the text.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The vocabulary used is limited but minimally adequate to communicate the basic message. There are noticeable errors in spelling, word form, and word choice that cause some difficulty for the reader. For example, 'owing' is consistently used instead of 'owning', and terms like 'indiviual', 'developes', 'maintainence', and 'responsibillity' contain spelling mistakes. Additionally, word choices such as 'usual job transfers' or 'substantial luggage' are slightly unnatural in this context. To achieve a higher band, you need to expand your range of vocabulary, use less common items with greater precision regarding style and collocation, and eliminate spelling errors.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writing relies on a limited range of sentence structures, and your attempts at complex sentences are often faulty. There are frequent grammatical errors regarding subject-verb agreement, articles, and prepositions. Examples include 'Housing is one of such thing that makes people safe', 'almost every people', and 'makes the people difficult to adjust'. Punctuation and phrasing also show frequent slips that can occasionally cause difficulty for the reader. To improve your grammatical score, you should incorporate a wider variety of complex sentence forms while maintaining control over basic grammar, ensuring correct verb forms, plurals, and article usage.

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

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