Band 6.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.5 · Cambridge IELTS 14 · 2026-10-03

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

The growth of online shopping will one day lead to all shops in towns and cities closing.

Do you agree or disagree?

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

 

Student answer (Band 6.5)

As online shopping has dramatically grown in recent years, a debate is common among the society that whether it would lead to the closure of traditional shops and malls in cities. I am an advocate for the fact that although online shopping will grow in the future, it will never lead to the closure of traditional shops centres.

Firstly, certain products require a sense of consumers' personal touch and onsite suitability check. Although online shopping businesses endeavour to provide detailed specifications of product's quality and size, it never replaces the onsite in-person checking of consumers. For example, online stores still struggle to replace the try-room facilities of the graments shops. In pursuit of this, many online stores provides free return policy, but this has eventually lead to higher returns and eventually higher deliver costs.

Secondly, struggle of onlines stores to replace the small community shops has not proven to be practical. Some communities are usually far from cities, and setting up cost of local cloud store for urgent grocerries in such areas outweigh the profits. Therefore, although market share would be captured by online stores in the domain of certain products, like electric appliances etc., it would never be able to capture market share of urgent grocery items which are the lifeline of a community. Moreover, governments have been considering the environmental impacts of online transactions as more deliveries lead to more CO2 emmissions. This would in future would attract more taxation from the legislators and eventually would put pressure on such online stores to either shift to green policies which are not yet cost effective, or to become costly in comparision to traditoinal shops.

Cosequently, consumers' personal preferences, higher business setup costs and environmental impacts are major reasons for the consensus among masses that online shopping would never be able to replace the traditional shops soon.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.5

The response addresses all parts of the task and presents a clear position regarding the future of online shopping versus traditional shops. Relevant ideas are introduced, such as the need for personal touch and the practical limitations of online grocery stores in remote communities. However, some ideas are more fully developed than others, which is characteristic of this level. For instance, the point regarding government environmental impacts and future taxation is raised but left slightly under-developed without a deep exploration of how it directly prevents traditional stores from closing. To reach a higher band, all main ideas would need more extended support and thorough elaboration.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.5

The essay presents a coherent overall arrangement with a clear logical progression from introduction to body paragraphs and a concluding summary. Paragraphing is used sufficiently and appropriately, with each body paragraph dedicated to a distinct supporting argument. Cohesive devices such as 'Firstly', 'Secondly', and 'Consequently' are employed to structure the response, though referencing and cohesive ties are at times somewhat mechanical or formulaic. While the logical flow is easy to follow throughout, achieving a higher band would require more flexible and seamless transitions rather than reliance on standard transition markers.

Lexical Resource: Band 6.0

The writer demonstrates an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully attempting less common items and phrasing such as 'personal touch', 'onsite suitability check', and 'lifeline of a community'. However, there are some lexical inaccuracies and spelling errors, such as 'graments' instead of 'garments', 'onlines' instead of 'online', 'grocerries' instead of 'groceries', and 'traditoinal' instead of 'traditional'. Word choice is generally appropriate and communication is never impeded, but these occasional slips in spelling and precision prevent the writing from achieving a higher band.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 6.0

The response utilizes a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, demonstrating control over relative clauses and conditional structures, such as 'Although online shopping businesses endeavour to...'. There are some grammatical and punctuation errors present, including article usage issues like 'a debate is common among the society that whether', tense inconsistencies such as 'many online stores provides', and prepositional or phrasing slips like 'emmissions. This would in future would attract'. Despite these errors, they rarely impede communication. To reach a higher band, the writer would need to produce a higher proportion of error-free complex sentences and eliminate recurring minor structural slips.

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