Band 6.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.5 · Cambridge IELTS 11 · 2026-09-19

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

News stories on TV and in newspapers are very often accompanied by pictures.

Some people say that these pictures are more effective than words.

What is your opinion about this?

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

 

Student answer (Band 6.5)

There is an ongoing debate over whether the pictures should be included in the newspapers or on the television channels to explicit the stories. While a number of people believe that it is a beneficial approach, there are a few who contradict this opinion. From my standpoint, using images as a story narrating tool brings both advantages and disadvantages to the society by adding convenience to the working population and by wasting the resources such as time and money, respectively.

On the positive side, one major reason behind the use of pictures to describe the stories is that it is a convenient method of getting information about the current affairs. To elaborate, most of the working class population do not only have enough time or energy to read the entire news articles thoroughly but also they do get extremely exhausted after long working hours. Therefore, they can use these types of pictorical descriptions to get information about the recent activities happening across the globe. To illustrate, with the help of images of wars, people can know about the destructions caused by it, without even reading or watching the whole news.

On the contrary, some people believe that pictures' use in the news stories is a complete waste of resources. To cite an example, the main source of income for newspapers is from the sections, they allocate for advertisements or promotions. By adding extra images to news stories, the newspapers are more likely to cut their revenues which directly effect their overall profits. Additionally, TV news are time restricted. If news editors put more efforts on the images than on the actual news, then it wastes viewer's time as they have to search the news again to get detailed infomation. Hence, one can save both time and money by focusing on news' content and delivery rather than on the pictures.

Taking everything into account, I finally conclude that pictorical description of news has both benefits and drawbacks to the individuals. As a result, newspapers and channels both should put equal attention on the theory and pictures to provide audience with a proper mix of pictures and thorough content.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.5

The response addresses all parts of the task by presenting a clear position and discussing both the advantages and disadvantages of accompanying news stories with pictures. The student attempts to develop ideas well, such as explaining how busy workers utilize pictorial descriptions to grasp current affairs quickly, and discussing the economic impact on newspapers and time efficiency on television news. However, the reasoning behind newspapers cutting revenues through images is slightly unconvincing or underdeveloped, as pictures are typically used to attract readers rather than deter them. Despite this slight logical gap, a clear position is maintained throughout, earning a solid band score for covering the prompt adequately.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 7.0

The essay displays a clear overall progression and logical organization with appropriate paragraphing. Each body paragraph has a distinct focus, moving clearly from the introduction to the advantages, the disadvantages, and a balanced conclusion. Cohesive devices are used reasonably well, such as 'On the positive side', 'On the contrary', and 'Taking everything into account'. However, some referencing and transitional phrasing feel a bit mechanical or slightly awkward, such as 'to explicit the stories' in the opening sentence or 'TV news are time restricted' rather than 'are time-restricted'. Nevertheless, the logical flow is easy to follow throughout, making the overall structure quite effective.

Lexical Resource — Band 6.0

The student demonstrates an adequate to good range of vocabulary suited for the task, attempting less common lexical items such as 'exhausted', 'destructions', 'promotions', and 'pictorical description' (though the latter contains a spelling slip). There are occasional word choice and collocation inaccuracies, such as using 'explicit the stories' instead of 'explain or elucidate the stories', and a spelling error with 'infomation'. However, these errors do not impede communication. The vocabulary is generally sufficient to convey precise meanings regarding the pros and cons of visual media in news reporting, supporting a respectable band score.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 6.0

The writer uses a good mix of simple and complex sentence forms, demonstrating control over relative clauses and conditional structures. Examples like 'While a number of people believe that it is a beneficial approach, there are a few who contradict this opinion' show varied sentence architecture. However, there are several grammatical errors and awkward phrasings present, such as 'whether the pictures should be included' (unnecessary definite article), 'do not only have enough time' (misplaced correlative conjunction), and 'TV news are time restricted' (subject-verb agreement/plurality mismatch). Punctuation is generally fine, but minor errors persist. The frequency of errors does not impede communication, allowing the text to read quite smoothly overall.

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

Browse more IELTS Writing model answers or get your own writing scored by the same AI examiner.