Without capital punishment (the death penalty) 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 with this opinion?
Sample Response
Before discussingBefore talking about the essential role of the death penalty, you have to think about the meaning and purposethe meaning, and the purpose, of any kind of punishment. If you consider that the purpose is to prevent offenders from committing crimes againprevent the guilty from being nasty again, you can be persuaded by an argumentbe seduced by an argumentation in favour of the abolitionsuppression of capital punishment. But you have to think about another aspect of the problem: a punishment is also effective in deterring peopleuseful to impress people, to make them fear the law. In fact, let's take the example of a young misfit who has growna young misfit, which has grown in a violent atmosphere, influenced by older offendersdelinquents, etc. He lives onin the streets; he has no aimhe's got no aim but to survive. This is the kind of person who could possibly kill someone for money, or even for fun. Why would he fear prison? Life would be easier for him there. In addition, in many cases, when prisoners behave wellwhen you behave normally, you can receive sentence reductionsbenefit from penalty reductions. This young misfit needs to be impressed; he needs to know that the law sets a boundarythe law is a frontier. When you cross it, you can lose your life. That is why capital punishment helps maintain a distinction between robbery and murderhelps keep a distance between robbery and murder. If you abolish it, you remove the distinctionyou suppress the difference between these two types of crime, which are completely different. But there is also a limit to establishdefine: even if the death penalty is unavoidable, it would be a crime to apply it to inadequate cases. If there is no premeditation or past facts which can justify such a punishment, it is far too strict to apply the death penalty. That is why the lawmakers have to establish precisely the context in which capital punishment can be imposedcapital punishment car being pronounced. That is the price to pay to limit violence without using excessive violence.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response develops a clear, nuanced position that supports capital punishment as a deterrent while restricting it to carefully defined cases, and the hypothetical offender provides sustained support. The main limitation is that some claims, particularly the asserted distinction between robbery and murder, are insufficiently justified and occasionally expressed imprecisely. The highest priority is to strengthen the reasoning with balanced evidence and more natural academic wording.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
A clear position is developed through a sustained deterrence argument and an appropriate qualification about limiting the penalty's use.
Justify the central deterrence claim more rigorously and address a plausible counterargument to deepen the evaluation.
Coherence and Cohesion
The reasoning progresses coherently from the purpose of punishment through an example to a qualified conclusion, though paragraphing is absent.
Divide the argument into focused paragraphs and make the transition from deterrence to legal safeguards more explicit.
Lexical Resource
The response shows a good range of vocabulary for punishment and crime, but several choices are unnatural or imprecise.
Use more idiomatic academic expressions, replacing phrases such as 'being nasty again,' 'seduced by an argumentation,' and 'past facts.'
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Varied complex sentences are generally well controlled and meaning remains clear, despite several agreement, relative-pronoun, and form errors.
Proofread relative clauses and passive constructions, particularly forms such as 'a misfit who has grown up' and 'can be imposed.'
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Without capital punishment (the death penalty) 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 with this opinion?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.