Band 6.0 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.0 · Cambridge IELTS 16 · 2026-09-04

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Some people spend most of their lives living close to where they were born.

What might be the reasons for this?

What are the advantages and disadvantages?

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

 

Student answer (Band 6.0)

Today, some people prefer to live in the same place or near where they were born. People prefer this because they do not want to leave their family or loved ones. Along with this, they feel more connected to their place, as they get a lot of satisfaction and happiness in their life, but there are some pros and cons to this decision as well.

Firstly, the advantages of this thinking are that they feel safer and more secure in their birthplace, as they are more familiar and comfortable with the area. Moreover, they feel more like themselves as they are connected with the area. For example, our grandparents or rural area people never want to live in cities or outside the village, as they feel more suffocation and pollution.

Furthermore, the disadvantages of this as they never get updated with today's world because they are not able to think with a broad mindset and have difficulty adapting to the fast-paced environment of the cities. For instance, our grandparents were never able to understand technology such as the internet, updated cell phones, and so on. As a result, they never got a chance to experience the city lifestyle with the updated technologies.

In my opinion, both things have created a different impact on the lifestyle, as people learn a lot of ethics from their birthplace and from outer cities as well.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.0

The response addresses all parts of the prompt, identifying reasons for staying in one's birthplace as well as the advantages and disadvantages. However, the development of ideas is limited. The word count is 231 words, which is below the 250-word minimum, resulting in an under-developed response. The arguments regarding 'suffocation' and 'pollution' in cities are somewhat generalised and could have been expanded with more specific examples. Because the response fails to meet the minimum length requirement, the score is capped at a 5.0 for Task Achievement.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0

The essay is organised into logical paragraphs, with a clear introduction, body paragraphs for advantages and disadvantages, and a brief conclusion. Cohesive devices such as 'Firstly', 'Moreover', and 'Furthermore' are used to link ideas. However, the progression of ideas is sometimes mechanical, and the concluding paragraph is very brief and lacks a strong summary of the main points. The referencing is generally clear, but the overall flow could be improved by using more sophisticated transitions between sentences.

Lexical Resource — Band 6.0

The vocabulary is adequate for the task but lacks range and precision. The student relies on common words like 'good', 'bad', 'things', and 'lifestyle'. There are some attempts at less common vocabulary, such as 'fast-paced environment', but these are infrequent. Some word choices are slightly unnatural, such as 'rural area people' or 'feel more suffocation'. To achieve a higher band, the student should focus on using more precise collocations and a wider variety of topic-specific vocabulary related to migration and urbanisation.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 6.0

The essay uses a mix of simple and complex sentence structures. While the meaning is generally clear, there are frequent grammatical errors, such as 'our grandparents or rural area people never want to live' and 'both things have created a different impact'. Punctuation is generally acceptable, but the sentence structure is often repetitive. The control of grammar is sufficient to communicate the main ideas, but the lack of error-free complex sentences prevents a higher score. More attention to subject-verb agreement and article usage is needed.

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

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