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Band 5.5 · 367 words · IELTS Writing Task 2

Some people believe that smartphones should be banned in secondary schools. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

This IELTS Writing Task 2 answer was marked Band 5.5 on the four official criteria. Its strongest criterion was Task Response (6); Coherence & Cohesion (5) held it back. The biggest single improvement: Improve grammatical control by separating run-on sentences such as "...schoolwork, this eventually leads..." and checking subject-verb agreement, punctuation and complete clauses.

How it was marked

CriterionBandWhy
Task Response6The position is clear from the opening, where the writer says, "I strongly agree that the use of mobile phones by learners should be halted," and both main reasons are relevant to banning smartphones. However, development is uneven: the discussion of holiday social-media use is only indirectly connected to school restrictions, and the conclusion's phrase "scraping them off their routine" does not clearly restate the extent of agreement.
Lexical Resource5The writer attempts a reasonably broad vocabulary, including "unrestricted sites," "moral compass" and "emulating the acts," but many expressions are unnatural or imprecise. Frequent spelling and word-form problems such as "perfomance," "loosing," "neccessiating" and "wopork" reduce accuracy and make the vocabulary less controlled.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy5There is an attempt to use complex structures, including conditional and relative clauses in "when an adolescent boy stumbles upon a pornographic website online, he will assume..." However, frequent agreement, punctuation, clause-boundary and sentence-construction errors, including "Students often direct all their attention to these gadgets thus forgetting... this eventually leads...," make the grammar only partly controlled.
Coherence & Cohesion5The essay has a recognisable structure with an introduction, two body paragraphs beginning "To begin with" and "Additionally," and a conclusion. Nevertheless, the isolated fragment "time,come across harmful content, loose interest in school wopork" interrupts the progression, while references such as "This" in "This, unlike actually playing outside" are unclear.

The answer

A learner answer, not a model answer — study what the marks reward, don't copy it.

A certain category of people hold onto the notion that high school learners ought not to be given access to mobile devices. Students often direct all their attention to these gadgets thus forgetting about their schoolwork, this eventually leads to poor school perfomance. I strongly agree that the use of mobile phones by learners should be halted. time,come across harmful content, loose interest in school wopork To begin with, various technological applications are commonly immersive in terms of focus and touch with reality. People frequently find themselves sinking deep into different content posted online subsequently loosing track of time, and in worst scenarios neglecting responsibilities. School going children are not an exception and considering the fact that they spend a lot of time in school, content on the internet masks itself as a form of brain relaxing activity. This, unlike actually playing outside has no limiting signs like getting tired, leading to long hours of scrolling. For example, a student who spends most of the holiday on apps like Tiktok and Instagram will most likely forget to study because these apps have a unique topic every day. When schools reopen, the student will undoubtedly have poor scores as compared to when schools were closing. This could form part of the broader range of factors contributing to poor grades in school examinations neccessiating the ban of these devices. Additionally, the internet has millions of unrestricted sites some of which are harmful and degrading and when minors are exposed their moral compass gets interfered with. Teenagers are still familiarizing with basic moral principles and so are not in a position to absolutely differentiate right from wrong. When they come across pornographic films, they would normalize the acts and even incorporate them in their lives. For instance, when an adolescent boy stumbles upon a pornographic website online, he will assume that that is what adulthood is about consequently emulating the acts. These fosters bad societal morals thus mobile phones which expose children to these items should be prohibited. In conclusion, social media and the internet distances school goers from their books and also introduces rotten information such as pornography to them thereby scraping them off their routine would be beneficial.

Corrections from the marking

  • A certain category of people hold onto the notion that high school learners ought not to be given access to mobile devices.

    A certain category of people holds onto the notion that high school learners ought not to be given access to mobile devices.

    The singular subject "category" requires the singular verb "holds".

  • Students often direct all their attention to these gadgets thus forgetting about their schoolwork, this eventually leads to poor school perfomance.

    Students often direct all their attention to these gadgets, thus forgetting about their schoolwork. This eventually leads to poor school perfomance.

    A comma cannot join two independent clauses, so a full stop is needed before "This"; a comma also separates the supplementary participial phrase.

  • school perfomance

    school performance

    "Performance" is spelled with "-orm-", not "-om-".

  • time,come across harmful content, loose interest in school wopork

    Students waste time, come across harmful content, and lose interest in school wopork.

    This is a sentence fragment lacking a subject and a finite verb, and the listed actions need parallel coordination.

  • time,come across harmful content

    waste time and come across harmful content

    This detached fragment is not connected to the surrounding argument and needs to be integrated into a complete idea.

  • loose interest in school wopork

    lose interest in schoolwork

    "Lose" means stop being interested, while "loose" means not tight; "wopork" is also a spelling error.

  • technological applications are commonly immersive in terms of focus and touch with reality

    technological applications are often so absorbing that users lose touch with reality

    "Immersive in terms of focus" and "touch with reality" are not natural collocations in this context.

  • People frequently find themselves sinking deep into different content posted online subsequently loosing track of time, and in worst scenarios neglecting responsibilities.

    People frequently find themselves sinking deep into different content posted online, subsequently loosing track of time and, in worst scenarios, neglecting responsibilities.

    Commas are needed to mark the supplementary participial phrase and the parenthetical phrase, while the unnecessary comma before "and" should be removed.

How this answer could score higher

  1. Improve grammatical control by separating run-on sentences such as "...schoolwork, this eventually leads..." and checking subject-verb agreement, punctuation and complete clauses.
  2. Use accurate, natural collocations and spelling: replace "scraping them off their routine" with "disrupting their study routines" and correct "perfomance," "loosing," "neccessiating" and "wopork."
  3. Keep development directly focused on secondary schools by replacing the holiday-based example "spends most of the holiday" with a specific example of smartphone distraction or harmful content during the school day.

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