For some people, the ideal holiday is to get away from their normal routine by staying in a hotel or camping in a countryside. Others prefer to stay at home and do things they do not normally have time for. What do you think are the benefits of going away on holidays?
Sample Response
Nowadays in this busy world where everybody is busy with something, schools, jobs, business, etc., finding some free days to relax and going on holidaygoing to holidays is like drinking a cold glass of water when you are dying of thirst in a desert. Our body and brain need to relax once in a while in order to work and function properly and non-stop working can be detrimental to them. Some people prefer to stay at home and do their overdue tasks, while others like to get out of their daily routines and go away and set their minds freeset theirs mind free from daily concerns. For me, travelling away from home is the better choice.Which one is the best one? I am personally a fan of going away on holidays and when I find some days when I get free, even for a short time, I prefer to travel and get away from my daily life. In my opinion the advantages of going away are numerousadvantages of going away are numerous. Just as our body needs different types of foodLikewise, our body which needs different types of food, vitamins, drinks etc. to function correctly, our brain also needs energy supply. It needs to go through a "relaxing cycle" to be able to work effectively and properly. Research shows that our brain has a limited capacity to receive and save information in a certain period of time. For instance, if you are learning a language, your brain uses the night sleep cycle to process the information received during the day and store them. Without the night-sleep, you will not be able to learn new things. This "relaxing cycle" works similarlysimilar to the periods of sleepnight-sleeps and gives our brain the chance to "restart" and process better in the upcoming activities. When you go away your brain gets the opportunity to think about something else than what it has been doing all the timewhat it had done all the time. You can relax and set your mind free, listen to music and enjoy. On the other handside, when you stay at home duringat holidays and force your brain to do the same things it has been doing all the time, it´s like working day and night without sleep and the chance of "mental exhaustionbrain collapse" and mental diseases are huge. To sum up, overloading our brain with multiple tasks continuously is like driving a car for a long distance without refuellingfuel supply. The brain stops working after a while like a car stops driving. Therefore it is important to let the brain relax and recharge by going away from home.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response's strongest feature is its clear support for going away on holiday, sustained through an accessible explanation of mental rest and recovery from routine. Its development is nevertheless too dependent on repeated brain-recharge analogies, and long sentences sometimes reduce precision; the priority is to organize two distinct benefits into separate paragraphs, support each with a concrete example, and proofread for natural collocations and grammatical control.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The essay clearly supports going away on holiday and gives a sustained reason: mental rest and recovery from routine. The answer is relevant and developed, but it relies heavily on one repeated brain-recharge idea and does not explore a wider range of benefits such as family bonding, perspective, or productivity after returning.
Keep the clear position, but develop two distinct benefits in separate paragraphs and support each with a concrete example rather than repeating the same rest-and-brain analogy.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response has a recognizable introduction, body discussion, and conclusion, and the argument is easy to follow. Progression is weakened by a single long paragraph style, repeated analogies, and rhetorical questions that do not organize the answer efficiently.
Use clear body paragraphs with topic sentences such as mental recovery and change of environment, then make each example lead back to the holiday-benefit question.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is generally adequate and includes some effective phrases such as daily routines, recharge, and detrimental. Several collocations are unnatural or informal, and repeated references to the brain reduce lexical flexibility.
Replace awkward phrases with natural academic collocations, for example "go on holiday", "set their minds free", "mental exhaustion", and "a change of environment".
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Meaning is usually clear, and the writer attempts complex sentences. Errors with plural nouns, articles, pronouns, and clause control occur regularly, especially in long sentences, so grammatical accuracy is below the level of the ideas.
Proofread long sentences for agreement and pronoun forms, and split overloaded comparisons into shorter, controlled sentences.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
For some people, the ideal holiday is to get away from their normal routine by staying in a hotel or camping in a countryside. Others prefer to stay at home and do things they do not normally have time for. What do you think are the benefits of going away on holidays?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.