Band 6.0 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.0 · Cambridge IELTS 15 · 2026-10-01

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 6.0)

Many cultures believes that to achieve anything hard work is very important thus, children are often told that anything is achievable if enough hard work is carried out. This essay will point-out both advantages and disadvantages of giving this advise to children.

On one hand, advising children to do enough hard work to achieve anything makes them feel more confident and strong. In addition, it help children to stay consistent towards their work and build self-discipline. For instances, if a kid is working hard to achieve his desire or goal it helps him or her to face challenges, learn from mistakes which could make him or her a better person in academics as well as personaly in the future. Furthermore, poor kids who do not have good family conditions and suffers from lack of knowledge can feel confident and work hard to achieve his goal.

On the other hand, always tolding children to try hard for their success or goal can have some negative points. Children might feel more pressure and it also produce stress of working hard. Moreover, if they try too hard and still fails it can broke their confidence and children blames themselves for the failure which creates a negative impact on them. Also, not everything depends on only hard work other factors like luck, support and proper knowledge also play vital role in achieving something and adivsing them to only work hard ignoring other factors can also impact their growth.

To conclude, children should be told to do hard work to achieve their goals and desires because it benefits them to build confidence, self discipline but they should also given right information including other factors like luck and family condition and possible outcomes so they can handle failure gracefully and try to get better.

AI examiner evaluation

CriterionBand
Task Achievement / Task Response6.5
Coherence and Cohesion6.5
Lexical Resource5.5
Grammatical Range and Accuracy5.5
Overall6.0

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.5

The response successfully addresses all parts of the task by discussing both the advantages and disadvantages of telling children they can achieve anything through hard work. The position is clear throughout the essay. The ideas presented, such as building self-discipline and confidence on the one hand, and creating undue pressure and dealing with failure on the other, are relevant and effectively cover the prompt. However, some ideas remain slightly under-developed; for instance, the point regarding poor children and family conditions is introduced but not fully expanded upon. To reach a higher level, all supporting points would need deeper explanation and extension without relying on generalisations, ensuring that every argument is thoroughly explored and justified.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.5

The essay presents a coherent overall arrangement with a clear structure that includes an introduction, distinct body paragraphs for advantages and disadvantages, and a conclusion. Paragraphing is used appropriately to separate main themes. Cohesive devices such as 'On one hand,' 'On the other hand,' and 'To conclude' are employed to guide the reader through the arguments. Nevertheless, cohesion is at times mechanical or faulty, seen in referencing issues and transitions that feel slightly repetitive, such as the frequent repetition of 'achieve' and 'goals'. Progression is visible, but to achieve a higher band, the logical links between sentences and paragraphs would need to be smoother and more sophisticated, avoiding repetitive transitional patterns and ensuring seamless flow.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The writer demonstrates an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully attempting less common items such as 'self-discipline,' 'consistency,' and 'gracefully.' However, there are noticeable limitations and inaccuracies in word choice, collocation, and word form. Examples include grammatical and lexical slips such as 'believes' instead of 'believe,' 'advise' used as a noun instead of 'advice,' 'always tolding,' 'fails' instead of 'fail,' and 'broke' instead of 'break.' These lexical and spelling errors do not impede overall communication, but they restrict the score. To move up to a higher band, the vocabulary needs to show greater precision, natural collocation, and a wider range of sophisticated, less common lexical items used with consistent accuracy.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

The essay displays a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, attempting complex structures like conditional clauses and relative clauses. There are some errors in grammar and punctuation, such as subject-verb agreement issues ('cultures believes', 'it help'), missing articles, and awkward prepositional phrases ('persony', 'in academics'). Importantly, these errors are not frequent enough to severely hinder understanding, and they rarely impede communication. The control over grammar represents a solid mid-range performance. To reach a higher standard, the writer would need to produce a greater majority of error-free sentences, demonstrate more precise control over complex grammatical structures, and refine punctuation to ensure higher accuracy throughout the text.

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

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