Banning Junk Food Advertising to Children: Band 6 Sample Essay

The writer answers the question and the position is clear from the first paragraph to the last ("I agree … should be banned completely"). Two relevant reasons are given — children's inability to recognise advertising and the health effects — and the opposing view about parents' responsibility is mentioned and answered. However, the ideas are not fully developed: the nephew example is personal and brief, "Doctors say" is a vague appeal to authority, and the essay never explains why a complete ban is needed rather than a partial one, which is the key word in the question. This places Task Response at Band 6.

The essay is clearly organised into an introduction, two reasons, a counter-argument and a conclusion, so the overall progression is easy to follow. The linking, however, is mechanical ("Firstly", "Secondly", "In conclusion"), and two sentences begin with informal connectors ("But parents…", "So the government…"). Referencing is sometimes unclear: in "bad eating habits which start in childhood is difficult to change when they grow up", "they" appears to refer to the habits rather than the children. Cohesion is effective overall but faulty in places, which is Band 6.

The vocabulary is adequate for the topic, with some appropriate items such as "junk food", "tooth decay" and "make healthy choices". There is noticeable repetition of "children", "adverts" and "parents", and one word choice is inappropriate in register: "fat children" should be overweight children in an academic essay. There is also a spelling/word-form error — "can not" should be written as one word, cannot — but none of these problems prevents understanding, so Lexical Resource reaches Band 6.

This is the weakest criterion. The essay relies mainly on simple sentences, and the few complex structures are often inaccurate. Errors are frequent: subject–verb agreement ("my little nephew always ask", "Young children is", "junk food cause", "habits … is difficult", "their child watch", "there is too many adverts", "It protect children and help"), plurals ("many health problem"), articles ("a important role"), the possessive ("harmful for children health" should be harmful to children's health) and a modal error ("must to help"). There is also a comma splice ("they think it is fun, they don't know…"). Although the meaning is usually recoverable, the frequency of these errors places grammar at Band 5.