Band 6.0 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.0 · Cambridge IELTS 12 · 2026-08-02

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

In recent years, many small local shops have closed because customers travel to large shopping centres or malls to do their shopping.

Is this a positive or a negative development?

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

 

Student answer (Band 6.0)

In contemporary era, shopping habit of many individuals is altered. People prefer huge malls and shopping centres over small local stores for their shopping because of that numerous tiny shops have ended their businesses. It wreck a negetive impact on small business units.

Firstly, local stores are run by family members and their main source of income came from those stores. If customers frequently visiting huge malls, local store suffered tremendious problems such as financial breakdowns and unemployment.

For example, In many countries, small local businesses are shuting down because of large malls, Therefore, it leads to unemployment in local community.

Secondly, local store needs to promote their businesses because of massive competion from huge shopping centres. Promotion requires enormous funding due to that store owners need to rely on bank. For example, local store are investing huge amount of money on advertisment to attract new customer. Thus, their profit merging will reduce and they suffer from financial problems.

lastly, If small store close their busniess unit because of huge malls, local community face multitudious issues. They have to travel to the malls for shopping even they have to spend huge ammount of money on some items at the malls,

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.5

The response addresses the prompt by identifying the closure of local shops as a negative development. However, the essay is significantly under the 250-word minimum, which limits the depth of the arguments. While the main ideas—unemployment and financial pressure on small business owners—are relevant, they are not fully developed. The lack of word count prevents a more thorough exploration of the consequences, leading to a somewhat repetitive structure. To improve, you should expand on your examples and provide a more detailed conclusion that synthesises your points.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.5

The essay uses basic cohesive devices such as 'Firstly', 'Secondly', and 'Lastly' to structure the paragraphs. While this provides a clear logical progression, the transitions between sentences within paragraphs are sometimes mechanical or abrupt. Paragraphing is present, but the ideas within the paragraphs are not always linked smoothly. For instance, the transition from the problem of unemployment to the issue of advertising costs feels disjointed. Improving the use of referencing and varied linking phrases would help the flow of the essay.

Lexical Resource — Band 6.0

The vocabulary is generally adequate for the task but lacks the range and precision required for higher bands. There are several spelling errors (e.g., 'negetive', 'tremendious', 'shuting', 'multitudious') and some awkward collocations, such as 'profit merging' instead of 'profit margins'. While you attempt to use topic-specific vocabulary like 'unemployment' and 'financial breakdowns', the overall range is limited. Focusing on accurate spelling and learning more sophisticated synonyms for common words will help improve your score in this area.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 6.0

The essay contains a mix of simple and some complex sentence structures, but there are frequent grammatical errors that occasionally impede clarity. Examples include subject-verb agreement issues ('local store are investing', 'small store close their busniess') and incorrect verb tenses ('local store suffered'). Punctuation is also inconsistent, with commas used incorrectly in place of full stops. To reach a higher band, you need to focus on consistent subject-verb agreement and ensure that your complex sentences are constructed accurately without errors.

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