Maintaining long-term friendships is becoming increasingly challenging for many adults. What are the primary reasons for this difficulty? Why is it important for individuals to make an effort to sustain these relationships?
This IELTS Writing Task 2 answer was marked Band 5 on the four official criteria. Its strongest criterion was Task Response (5); Grammatical Range & Accuracy (4) held it back. The biggest single improvement: Develop both questions more fully by presenting at least two distinct causes and at least two clearly explained benefits, rather than concentrating on "lack of time" and emotional support.
How it was marked
| Criterion | Band | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Task Response | 5 | The essay addresses both questions, identifying reduced time because of "increasing of working hours or family issues" and explaining that friendships provide someone to talk to when adults feel upset. However, the reasons are limited to one main idea, and the discussion of importance is developed mainly through emotional support and work performance rather than several fully developed benefits. |
| Lexical Resource | 5 | The essay uses enough vocabulary to discuss time, family, friendship, stress, and work, with useful expressions such as "lifelong friend" and "negative feeling." However, frequent spelling errors, incorrect word forms, and imprecise collocations such as "release horrble feeling" and "bad performance in society" limit precision and flexibility. |
| Grammatical Range & Accuracy | 4 | There is some attempted range through subordinate clauses and a conditional structure, including "when adults forming a family" and "If they don't have a friend to talk to," but grammatical errors are frequent throughout the response. Problems with agreement, verb forms, articles, plurals, sentence construction, and punctuation often make the writing difficult to process, even though the main meaning is usually recoverable. |
| Coherence & Cohesion | 5 | The response has a basic progression from reasons to importance and a conclusion, but the organisation is weakened by the lowercase paragraph opening "firstly" and by long, overloaded sentences. Cohesive devices such as "For example," "since," and "In conclusion" are present, although relationships between ideas are sometimes unclear or repetitive. |
The answer
A learner answer, not a model answer — study what the marks reward, don't copy it.
Corrections from the marking
The primary reasons for maintaining long-term frendships for adults often is the lack of time to communication and in touch with each other.
The primary reasons why maintaining long-term frendships is difficult for adults are the lack of time to communicate and stay in touch with each other.
The plural subject "reasons" requires "are", and "to" must be followed by parallel verb forms: "to communicate and stay".
long-term frendships
long-term friendships
"Frendships" is a spelling error; the correct spelling is "friendships".
lack of time to communication and in touch with each other
lack of time to communicate and stay in touch with each other
"Communication" is a noun, but this structure requires the verb "communicate"; "stay in touch" is the natural collocation.
The lack of time is often cause by increasing of working hours or family issues.
The lack of time is often caused by increasing working hours or family issues.
The passive structure requires the past participle "caused" after "is".
increasing of working hours
increased working hours
"Increased working hours" is the correct adjective-noun collocation for longer work schedules.
For example when adults forming a family he or she will put more time on their partner and spend less time on friendships, in order to have more spare time for other things.
For example, when adults form a family, they will spend more time with their partner and less time on friendships in order to have more spare time for other things.
The introductory clause needs commas, "forming" must be changed to the finite verb "form", and the plural subject "adults" requires the pronoun "they".
put more time on their partner and spend less time on friendships
spend more time with their partner and spend less time maintaining friendships
The natural collocations are "spend time with someone" and "maintain friendships," not "put time on" and "spend time on friendships."
firstly, the importance to sustain these relationship, is to ensure you have a friend to talk with when you are depress and upset
Firstly, the importance of sustaining these relationships is to ensure that you have a friend to talk with when you are depress and upset
Use "importance of sustaining", make the count noun plural, and do not place a comma between the subject and its verb; "that" also makes the clause structure clearer.
How this answer could score higher
- Develop both questions more fully by presenting at least two distinct causes and at least two clearly explained benefits, rather than concentrating on "lack of time" and emotional support.
- Build accurate core grammar through subject-verb agreement, verb forms, articles, and plurals; for example, change "when adults forming a family" to "when adults form a family."
- Improve vocabulary precision and spelling by learning collocations such as "relieve negative feelings" and checking errors such as "frendships," "becuase," and "horrble" before submitting.
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