Band 8.5 model answer: advantages and disadvantages

A band 8.5 model answer to a real IELTS Writing Task 2 question, with the paragraph plan that fits it. Aim for 250 to 290 words in 40 minutes.

The question

In many countries, the practice of biohacking and self-tracking personal health data through wearable devices is becoming increasingly popular. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this trend?

Your 4-paragraph plan

Introduction (40-50 words). Paraphrase the topic and say whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
Body paragraph 1 (80-100 words). The strongest advantage, developed with a concrete example.
Body paragraph 2 (80-100 words). The main disadvantage, developed honestly, then weighed against the advantage.
Conclusion (40-50 words). State your overall judgement: which side wins and why.

The trap in this question type

The question usually asks whether the advantages OUTWEIGH the disadvantages. Answer that comparison directly, not just a list of each.

Band 8.5 model answer

359 words, the length a strong candidate produces in the 40 minutes Task 2 allows (the minimum is 250). Written for this exact question in the official format. Read it once for ideas, then write your own before comparing.

A 42-year-old accountant in Manchester wears an Oura ring that logs her heart rate variability and sleep stages every night, and she now adjusts her workload on days it flags poor recovery. This kind of granular self-monitoring, once confined to professional athletes, has spread rapidly, and it brings real benefits alongside some troubling costs. The chief advantage is that continuous data turns vague intentions into measurable habits. Someone whose step count is stuck at 3,000 a day has a concrete target to beat, unlike being told merely to "exercise more". Devices such as the Apple Watch have also detected irregular heart rhythms in otherwise healthy users, prompting early cardiology visits that caught atrial fibrillation before it caused a stroke. For chronic conditions like diabetes, continuous glucose monitors from companies such as Dexcom let patients see in real time how a bowl of rice affects their blood sugar, replacing guesswork with immediate feedback that changes behaviour far more effectively than a doctor's annual lecture. However, the same data can become a source of anxiety rather than empowerment. Gym members have been known to refuse to end a workout until an app confirms they have burned exactly 500 calories, treating an estimate with dubious accuracy as gospel. This obsessive checking, sometimes called "orthosomnia" when it involves sleep trackers, can worsen insomnia precisely because users lie awake worrying about their sleep score. There is also a privacy dimension: health insurers in the United States have begun offering premium discounts to customers who share fitness-tracker data, an arrangement that quietly pressures people to trade personal biometric information for savings, with little clarity about how that data might be used against them later, for instance in future underwriting decisions. On balance, biohacking tools are most valuable when treated as diagnostic aids rather than moral scorekeepers. A device that flags an irregular heartbeat is doing something a casual glance in the mirror cannot; one that induces guilt over an unmet step count is doing active harm. The technology itself is neutral, so the outcome depends entirely on whether users and regulators treat the data as informative or as a new source of surveillance and self-judgment.

Why this answer earns band 8.5

The opening example is rendered in third person ('A 42-year-old accountant in Manchester wears an Oura ring') rather than as a first-person anecdote, which keeps the register appropriately formal for Task 2 while still being concrete (Task Response).
The corrected article in 'an arrangement that quietly pressures people' shows the kind of small determiner accuracy examiners check closely in Grammatical Range and Accuracy.
The relative clause 'Someone whose step count is stuck at 3,000 a day' replaces an earlier faulty reported-speech construction, illustrating how embedding information in a relative clause avoids ambiguity (Grammatical Range and Accuracy).
Discourse markers such as 'However' and 'On balance' are placed at paragraph openings to signal the shift from advantages to disadvantages and then to a final synthesis, giving the essay clear macro-structure (Coherence and Cohesion).
Precise collocations like 'replacing guesswork with immediate feedback' and 'diagnostic aids rather than moral scorekeepers' show controlled, topic-appropriate word choice rather than generic vocabulary (Lexical Resource).

The plan, reusable on any question of this type

Introduce a concrete real-world case of wearable self-tracking and state the balanced thesis (~54 words)
Explain the advantage that continuous data converts vague goals into measurable, actionable habits, with device examples (~109 words)
Explain the disadvantage that constant tracking can create anxiety and privacy risks (~121 words)
Conclude by weighing both sides and offering a clear final judgment on how the tools should be used (~75 words)

Phrases worth learning

This kind of ... has spread rapidly, and it brings real benefits alongside some troubling costs	use when introducing a two-sided topic to set up a balanced advantages/disadvantages structure
replacing guesswork with immediate feedback	use to contrast an old imprecise method with a new data-driven one in any technology essay
There is also a ... dimension	use to introduce an additional angle or consideration within a body paragraph
On balance	use to open a concluding paragraph that weighs competing points before giving a final verdict
with little clarity about how that data might be used against them later	use to raise a hedge about unknown future risk in essays about technology or data

This answer includes invented specific detail written to show how detail is used, not to be quoted as fact: the anecdote of the 42-year-old accountant in Manchester with an Oura ring; the specific claim that Apple Watch detected atrial fibrillation before it caused a stroke in this instance; the described gym members refusing to end workouts until burning exactly 500 calories; and the claim that US health insurers offer premium discounts for sharing fitness-tracker data. IELTS does not check facts, so this is about the texture, never the claim.