Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 16 · 2026-10-04

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Plastic bags, plastic bottles and plastic packaging are bad for the environment.

What damage does plastic do to the environment?

What can be done by governments and individuals to solve this problem?

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

 

Student answer (Band 5.5)

The use of plastics in the form of plastics bags, bottles and packaging are harmful for the environment. As more use of it cause more waste in the environment, which took lot of time to manage. It could be removed by proper awareness programmes and rules to me made for its use.

The use of plastic create issue of waste management. The things made of plastics are hard to be recycled. The bags, bottles and the things wraped in plastic packaging are not completely recyclable. Due to this incomplete breaking of the plastic into composites damage the environment. For example, the plastic waste dump by people in the city at any of the public places will keep on adding and ruin the beaty of the places as seen on many tourist places. As, the consumption of these plastic increases the management of these waste is rising at alarming rate.

To mitigate this issue the government should be providing awareness to the people for not using plastic by organising awareness campians. Talking about the individuals should be volunteering participating in these campians too make it success. Moreover, with the joint venture of rule makers and the people they should be cleaning their cities once in a week to remove any plastic and dump them at proper place to save the environment. The strict rules on the use of plastics and use of recyled materials should be put in place. However, the damage is so high that both individuals and higher autoritises need to come forward to stop its impact on environment.

In conclusion, although the use of plastic become our daily part but use of it will create more waste in our surroundings that are hard to be managed. This can be solved if strict rules are enforced and the awareness camps are run by both individulas and government.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses all parts of the task, discussing both the environmental damage caused by plastics and potential solutions involving governments and individuals. However, the development of ideas remains somewhat limited and under-developed. For instance, the explanation of how plastic damages the environment relies on general statements like 'ruin the beaty of the places' without deeper exploration into ecological or marine impacts. Similarly, the solutions proposed are quite basic, mentioning awareness campaigns and community clean-ups without fully extending these concepts. While a clear position is maintained throughout the text, the overall treatment of the prompt leans toward generalization rather than in-depth elaboration, placing the response firmly within this performance level.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

The essay presents a coherent overall arrangement with a recognizable introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Paragraphing is used appropriately to separate distinct ideas, such as environmental damage in the second paragraph and solutions in the third. However, the progression of ideas is occasionally disrupted by mechanical or faulty cohesion, such as the abrupt transition in 'Talking about the individuals should be volunteering'. Referencing is not always clear, and some cohesive devices are used awkwardly or inaccurately. Despite these flaws, the overarching structure holds together well enough to ensure the reader can follow the general flow of arguments from the problems to the proposed solutions.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The vocabulary used is limited but minimally adequate to discuss the topic of plastic pollution. There are noticeable word choice, word form, and spelling errors that cause some difficulty for the reader, such as 'beaty' instead of beauty, 'campians' instead of campaigns, 'wraped', and 'autoritises'. The writer attempts some less common vocabulary, such as 'mitigate', 'alarming rate', and 'joint venture', but these are often accompanied by inaccuracies in collocation or phrasing, as seen in 'joint venture of rule makers'. These lexical slips reflect a restricted range of vocabulary control that occasionally impedes smooth communication.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The response employs a limited range of grammatical structures, relying heavily on simple sentences alongside faulty attempts at complex ones. Frequent errors in grammar and punctuation appear throughout the text, including issues with subject-verb agreement ('the use of plastics... are harmful'), pluralization, missing articles, and awkward prepositions. For example, sentences such as 'As more use of it cause more waste' and 'rules to me made for its use' contain persistent errors in verb forms and sentence construction. These frequent mistakes cause some difficulty for the reader, though the core meaning of the arguments remains generally understandable.

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