Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 12 · 2026-09-03

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 5.5)

It is observed that majority of people are investing their time and money in visiting shopping complexes instead of buying stuff from the local market. However, this could a dangerous for the local vendors and businesses. From my perspective, I believe that advancement in moving from local shops to malls will affect the livelihood of business owners and culture.

Firstly, with the growing the market and urbanization, individuals invest their time and money at visiting places which looks aesthetically pleasing. For instance, to represent their lifestyle people visit these large shopping complexes and in order to present themselves rich and better than others, they tend to shop from there. Thus, draining their balance in aspect of looking like brand worthy.

Moreover, local markets has been destroyed with digital marketing and the rest is impacted by the shift of customers to shopping centres. For example, it has affected the businesses harshly as there are no customers available to shop locally. Thus, it has affected the market badly.

Moving ahead, there is a significant loss in culture and craft of regional market. For example, individuals ignoring the local market stuff in order to buy branded products has resulted in declining of old heritage and craft. As a consequence, future generation may not be able to see the handicrafts and products of historical importance.

To sum up, higher authorities should carefully observe the changes taking place and ensuring the security to local business owners and handicrafts in order to save the local markets.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.5

The response addresses the prompt by identifying the shift to shopping malls as a negative development. However, the development of ideas is somewhat repetitive and lacks depth. For example, the argument regarding 'lifestyle' and 'brand worthy' is mentioned but not fully explored in terms of its impact on the local economy. The conclusion is brief and lacks a summary of the main points. While the position is clear, the supporting arguments could be more nuanced to reach a higher band. The response stays on topic throughout, but the analysis of why this is a negative development remains somewhat superficial.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5

The essay is organized into logical paragraphs, each with a clear focus. Cohesive devices such as 'Firstly', 'Moreover', and 'As a consequence' are used to link ideas. However, the flow between sentences is sometimes mechanical, and the referencing is occasionally unclear, such as in the phrase 'the rest is impacted by the shift'. Paragraphing is used appropriately, but the progression of ideas within paragraphs could be smoother. The transition between the impact on vendors and the impact on culture is abrupt, which affects the overall coherence of the argument.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The vocabulary is generally adequate for the task but lacks precision and variety. There is some repetition of basic terms like 'shopping complexes', 'local markets', and 'affected'. While the student attempts to use some topic-specific vocabulary, such as 'urbanization' and 'heritage', there are instances of awkward phrasing, such as 'draining their balance in aspect of looking like brand worthy'. The range is sufficient to convey meaning, but more sophisticated collocations and a wider variety of synonyms would be required for a higher score.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.5

The essay uses a mix of simple and complex sentence structures. However, there are frequent grammatical errors that occasionally impede the flow, such as 'this could a dangerous' (missing verb), 'growing the market' (incorrect preposition/structure), and 'local markets has been destroyed' (subject-verb agreement error). Punctuation is generally acceptable, but the sentence construction often feels slightly unnatural. To improve, the student should focus on subject-verb agreement and the correct use of articles and prepositions to ensure more error-free sentences.

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