Smoking is prohibited in public places in many countries. Many office authorities also impose restrictions on smoking within the office premises. While many people welcome this restriction and suggest that smoking should be banned, others, however, feel that it takes away some of our freedom. What are your opinions on this?
Sample Response
Smoking and its seriousample consequences are widely discussed these days all over the world. Research and studies point out that active and passive smokingthe active and passive smoking are equally harmful to individuals and societythreatening to the individual and society. Though there is a small issue regarding the restriction: personal freedom, I hold the view that bans and restrictions on smokingthe ban and restriction on smoking, especially in public places and office settings, are fully justifiedare totally acceptable.
One obvious reason is that public smoking causesOne of the obvious reasons, public smoking causes various health hazards. To be more precise, a major cause of lung and oral cancers and heart disease is tobacco smokingmajor causes of the lung, oral cancers and heart ailments is none other than tobacco smoking. Prevention is better than cure. Instead of spending a large amount of money to treat these kinds of diseases, the government’s decisiongovernment’s decision to ban and regulate smokingon banning and controlling on smoking is more economicaleconomic and effective. Furthermore, passive smoking, which usually happens in public places, claims thousands of innocent people’s livesinnocent people's life across the world. At this juncture, restricting the minor freedom to smoke in public is justifiableprevention of little freedom like allowing public cigarette flaming is not justifiable. To cite an example, in the USA, the public smoking ban reduces the passive smokers’ cancer rates.
Another reason to support my view is that the public smoking restrictions reduce the risk of firedecline the fire risk rate to a great extent. In other words, in this congested world, allowing public smokingallowing of public smoking is like adding fuel to the fire. Careless handling of cigarette fire causes major fire problem. It claims not only thousands of innocent lives but also public propertypossessions. These social problems can be wisely handled by control of public smoking restrictions. In the UK, public smoking ban immensely reduced the building fire incidents in cities is the best epitome. However, an army of people claims that this is the breach of personal freedom. Perhaps it may be true to some degree, but we cannot deny that the public safety is much more important than minor restriction on freedommild freedom block.
To crown it all, ban and control of public smoking are beneficial, especially for the individual as well as the society. Banning public smoking will enhance the public health and safety in many ways. To consider banning smoking a huge positive impact its ignorable drawbacks are completely negligible.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The essay presents a clear pro-restriction position and supports it with two relevant lines of argument concerning health and fire safety, while briefly acknowledging personal freedom. Its main limitation is frequent inaccurate word choice and grammar, which sometimes obscures otherwise sensible reasoning. The priority is to express each cause-and-effect claim in direct, idiomatic sentences and replace exaggerated or unclear phrases with precise public-health and safety language.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response answers the question directly, sustains a clear view, and develops relevant health and fire-safety reasons with examples and a brief counterargument.
Develop the freedom objection more precisely and explain why protecting others justifies the restriction without relying on broad assertions.
Coherence and Cohesion
A clear introduction, two reason-based body paragraphs, and a conclusion create logical overall progression, though some linking phrases are mechanical or unclear.
Use simpler logical transitions and ensure each example follows directly from the claim it is intended to support.
Lexical Resource
The response attempts a broad topical range, but frequent inaccurate collocations such as public cigarette flaming, decline the fire risk rate, and mild freedom block reduce precision.
Prefer standard expressions such as second-hand smoke, reduce fire risk, public property, restriction of personal freedom, and negligible drawbacks.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Both simple and complex structures are attempted, but recurring agreement, article, possessive, and clause-construction errors sometimes hinder readability.
Prioritise complete sentence structure and subject-verb agreement, especially in the health-cause sentence, the UK example, and the final sentence.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Smoking is prohibited in public places in many countries. Many office authorities also impose restrictions on smoking within the office premises. While many people welcome this restriction and suggest that smoking should be banned, others, however, feel that it takes away some of our freedom. What are your opinions on this?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.