Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 15 · 2026-09-29

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

In some cultures, children are often told that they can achieve anything if they try hard enough. What are the advantages and disadvantages of giving children this message?

Student answer (Band 5.5)

A question on how to raise kids has been controversial over the years . some cultures believe that children should be instructed to believe that the sky is the limit.while this might boost the children self asteem and help them in putting all the effort in whatever they are doing it also does not give these children an opportunity to learn from life experiences. This essay will discuss the prones and cons of making children belive that anything can be acheved through hard work.

Children who are made to believe that they can achieve anything through hard work, work extra hard there by achieving more things than their age, However it does not give them time to explore the world as such they tend to do the worst when they become adults. for example some one who only focused on working hard , being a book worm at school, without doing extra curriculum activities chances are high that he will do those activities at an awkward age.

These young people also tend to be motivated and they have a high self esteem , however they are not given a chance to learn from life mistakes. hence limiting their exposure to the world.for example you can only know the pain of not working hard when you fail and repeat a grade, in such a way your hard working comes from you, its not superficial.

To sum it up training young people to believe in hard work has got its prons and cons.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

The response addresses the prompt by discussing both the advantages, such as boosting self-esteem, and disadvantages, such as a lack of preparation for real-world failures, of telling children they can achieve anything. A position is presented in the introduction and maintained throughout the essay. However, the ideas lack full development and tend to be slightly repetitive. For instance, the discussion on learning from life mistakes is introduced in the third paragraph but remains somewhat superficial without concrete exploration of how this impacts adult life. Although all parts of the task are addressed, the depth of extension places this response comfortably at Band 6.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.0

The essay displays a coherent overall arrangement with a clear introduction, body paragraphs, and a brief conclusion. However, paragraphing is somewhat irregular and basic, and cohesive devices are frequently faulty or mechanical. For example, sentences often run together without proper punctuation or capitalization, such as in the opening paragraph where sentences start without capital letters and lack smooth transitions. Furthermore, referencing is occasionally unclear, and repetitive sentence structures disrupt the logical progression of ideas. While the underlying argument can be followed, the mechanical cohesion and weak paragraph structuring prevent the response from achieving a higher band.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully attempting less common items such as 'self-esteem', 'superficial', and 'extra-curricular activities'. However, there are noticeable spelling and word choice errors throughout the text, including 'asteem' instead of esteem, 'prones' instead of pros, 'belive', 'acheved', 'there by', and 'book worm'. Fortunately, these inaccuracies rarely impede communication, as the intended meaning remains understandable to the reader. The limitations in precision and the presence of recurring spelling mistakes restrict the lexical score to this level.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, demonstrating some control over structure. However, grammatical accuracy is weak, with frequent punctuation and capitalization errors, run-on sentences, and comma splices. For example, 'Children who are made to believe that they can achieve anything through hard work, work extra hard there by achieving more things than their age, However it does not give them time...' contains major punctuation flaws. Grammatical errors and missing punctuation marks occur consistently across the text, though they rarely impede overall communication. The frequency of structural and punctuation errors places this essay firmly in the Band 5 category.

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