Without capital punishment our lives are less secure and crimes of violence increase. Capital punishment is essential to control violence in society. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Sample Response
Before starting the discussion on the essential role of death penalty or life sentence, we have to think about its meaning, purpose and factors behind the crime. In our society, people commitdo crimes to meet their needsfor the sake of their needs and sometimes for fun and also to satisfy their emotionsfor the satisfaction of their emotions. In my opinion, if we focus our attention on the causes which put the person on criminal-route then it will be very useful to take the prophylactic measure to stop the happening of crime.
The death penalty is the most extreme form of law enforcementDeath penalty is on the extreme of law enforcements and there are many stepsa lot many steps on the way to instil fear of and respect for the lawreflect the fear and respect of law. Criminals who kill others they do this not only for the sake of money but other factors like mental illness, deprived feelings, ignorance and cruel tradition also contributes. If our system of education identifies these underlying factors during childhooddetects these underlying factors in childhood then we can convert these potentially dangerous members of societylethal segments of society into productive members of societyuseful stuff.
A few countries have implementedFew countries have implemented the rule of capital punishment more aggressively and people over there are very frightened and depressed. Sometimes, powerful people take the opportunity to misuse the law against their enemies.
We should invest more resources in education, enforcement of laws against minor crimeslaw enforcement on minor crimes and try to punish peoplepunish little people for minor offencesfaults. For heinous crimes, the death penalty should be availableFor heinous crimes death penalty should be there but proceedingsproceeding should be very fair to minimiseavoid human bias.
Why this response received Band 5.5
The response's strongest feature is its attempt at a nuanced position: prevention should come first, while capital punishment may remain for heinous crimes under fair procedures. However, this position is not stated directly enough, key claims receive little support, and the response is slightly under length. Prioritise a clear thesis and develop two focused arguments with specific evidence before ending with an explicit conclusion.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response offers a relevant qualified view, but its degree of agreement is initially unclear and the main ideas are insufficiently developed.
State the precise position in the introduction and support the prevention and limited-use arguments with specific explanations or examples.
Coherence and Cohesion
Paragraphing separates the main topics, but progression is uneven and the response ends without a clearly signalled concluding synthesis.
Use one focused argument per body paragraph and add a conclusion that directly restates the qualified position.
Lexical Resource
Some less common vocabulary is attempted, but frequent inaccurate collocations and inappropriate word choices reduce precision.
Replace expressions such as "criminal-route," "lethal segments," "useful stuff," and "little people" with clear, neutral terms.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Meaning is generally recoverable, but frequent errors in articles, agreement, clause construction, and noun forms weaken control.
Build shorter complete sentences and systematically check articles, subject-verb agreement, plurals, and relative clauses.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Without capital punishment our lives are less secure and crimes of violence increase. Capital punishment is essential to control violence in society. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.