A cashless society
This is a model answer written to show what a Band 7 response looks like against the marking criteria. It is a worked example, not a graded submission. To see your own band, paste your writing into the free checker.
The prompt
In some countries, cash is disappearing as people pay for almost everything with cards and phones. What are the advantages and disadvantages of a society that no longer uses cash?
Band 7 model answer (260 words)
In several countries it is already possible to live for months without touching a banknote. A fully cashless society brings striking benefits, but it also carries risks that fall hardest on the people least able to bear them.
The advantages are mostly about efficiency and safety. Digital payments are faster for customers and cheaper for businesses, which no longer need to count, store and transport cash. Crime changes shape too: shops with no till to rob are less attractive targets, and because every transaction leaves a record, tax evasion and money laundering become far harder to hide. For governments, that visibility can translate into billions in recovered revenue.
The disadvantages begin with exclusion. Elderly people, the very poor and those without bank accounts depend on cash, and a cashless system quietly locks them out of ordinary life. Privacy is a second casualty, since a complete record of everything a person buys is a level of surveillance no cash society ever permitted. There is also fragility: when a payment network fails or a card is blocked in error, people cannot buy food, whereas cash keeps working in a blackout.
Some of these dangers can be softened, for example by guaranteeing basic bank accounts and requiring shops to accept cash for essential goods during the transition. The privacy problem, however, has no easy technical fix and deserves more public debate than it currently receives.
In conclusion, a cashless society is cleaner, quicker and harder on criminals, but it threatens the excluded, the private and the unlucky, and those costs deserve equal attention.
Why this reaches Band 7
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Task Response
Both sides are covered with specific, developed points, and the essay goes further by ranking the risks ("fall hardest on the people least able to bear them"), which turns a list question into an argument.
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Coherence and Cohesion
Advantages and disadvantages sit in dedicated paragraphs, each organised around a theme (efficiency, exclusion) rather than a loose sequence of points, with natural internal linking such as "Privacy is a second casualty".
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Lexical Resource
Precise topic vocabulary, "money laundering", "surveillance", "fragility", alongside expressive phrases like "quietly locks them out of ordinary life".
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Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Confident range, including "whereas cash keeps working in a blackout" and the triple structure "the excluded, the private and the unlucky", with strong accuracy.
The one fix to reach Band 7
The Band 6 version of this essay names advantages and disadvantages in single sentences and moves on. The single change for Band 7 is developing each point one step further: not just "some people are excluded" but who exactly, and what being excluded actually means for them.
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