Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 14 · 2026-10-02

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Some people say the main way to be happy in life is to have a lot of money. How might having a lot of money make people happy? What other things in life can make people happy?

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

 

Student answer (Band 5.5)

In the contemporary world, having a higher money is a mandatory thing to live a happy lives. It has various ways to be happy if someone has a lots of money. This essay will explore the possible reason with an approproate examples prior to concluding this discussion.

Firslty, money can make people happier by different kinds of way. One of the prime thing that can people do is tht they cn live their life without any trouble. For instance, people can get the better education by spending money on it. After this they can get an opportunity to get better employement. Consequently, they can create their strong value into the society. Moreover, they can fulfill their family needs which might not be possible without money. Along with that they could be able to donate certain amount of their money into different sorts of private aas well as non-govenrmental profit organisations. Which might be helpful for those people who may not be able fulfill their basic needs.

Apart from this all activities, local people can also make their life joyful with doing other kinds of work. These all activities would give better relief to an individuals. To illusrates this, people can do exercise, yoga, effective conversation with their family and their friends. These creates people's mind more ralaxed and more creative. They may get out from their everyday stressful situations. Even though, it is expensive to go outside but people may enjoy their life by going on vacations. Furthermore, if someone who can get satisfaction by doing social works, so they can provide certain types of services to the trusts.

In conclusion, although money is more importnt in everyone's life, but without money person can also get wide range of relaxation and happiness in their lives. On the top of that, they can creates their positive image into the society. Therefore, doing c=such kind of things into the life would always be grateful for an individual.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

The response addresses all parts of the prompt by discussing both how money might make people happy and what alternative things can bring happiness. However, the development is uneven. While the ideas concerning financial benefits are presented with some examples, such as education and employment, the alternative sources of happiness discussed in the third paragraph, like exercise and yoga, remain somewhat limited and under-developed. The position is generally clear throughout, but the reasoning could be extended further to fully explore both sides of the prompt. To reach a higher level, the writer needs to provide more fully elaborated explanations and more substantial examples for every main point raised.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

The essay presents a coherent overall arrangement with a clear attempt to structure the response into an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Paragraphing is used sufficiently to separate the distinct ideas. However, cohesion is at times mechanical or faulty. For instance, transitional phrases like 'Apart from this all activities' feel awkward, and referencing is occasionally unclear, such as the pronoun use in 'Which might be helpful'. The logical progression is somewhat disrupted by abrupt shifts between ideas. To improve coherence, the writer should ensure that cohesive devices are used more naturally and that sentences flow smoothly from one to the next without abrupt transitions.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, attempting some less common items such as 'contemporary', 'non-governmental', and 'satisfaction'. However, there are noticeable errors in word choice, word form, and spelling throughout the text, including 'higher money' instead of 'more money', 'lives' instead of 'life', 'approproate' instead of 'appropriate', 'Firslty', 'employement', and 'importnt'. These lexical inaccuracies and spelling slips do not severely impede communication, but they restrict the score because they show limited control over precision and collocation. To achieve a higher band, the writer must expand their vocabulary range and eliminate frequent spelling and word-formation errors.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writing demonstrates a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, attempting structures such as conditional and dependent clauses, as seen in 'Which might be helpful for those people who may not be able fulfill their basic needs.' There are frequent errors in grammar, including article misuse ('a higher money', 'the better education'), subject-verb agreement ('These creates'), and prepositional patterns. These errors require some effort from the reader to parse, though they rarely obscure the overall meaning completely. For a higher score, the writer needs to increase the proportion of error-free sentences and demonstrate better control over articles, plurals, and basic sentence construction.

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

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