TOEFL Academic Discussion — Band 5 Sample (Social Media in Schools)

Prompt

Your professor has posted the following discussion question, with two student replies already visible. This is one of three Academic Discussion samples in our band 5 series, alongside the sin-tax model and the AI-writing model.

Professor Marquez:
This week we are looking at the developmental psychology evidence behind a policy debate that has reached almost every school district in the country. Several state legislatures have now passed laws requiring public high schools to lock student phones away during the school day, and many districts have introduced their own restrictions on social media access on school networks. Supporters point to research linking heavy social media use with declines in adolescent attention and wellbeing. Critics worry about the loss of emergency contact, the impact on digital literacy instruction, and the assumption that a blanket ban will outperform a more granular approach.

For this discussion: should public high schools ban student phone and social media use during school hours? Defend your position with reference to the evidence or to the design of the policy itself.

Priya:
I support a ban. The Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge work on adolescent mental health is hard to dismiss, and even if the effect sizes are debated, classroom focus clearly improves when phones are out of the room. My cousin's school in New Jersey saw participation rise after they introduced lockable pouches.

Marcus:
I am against a blanket ban. Parents need to reach their kids in an emergency, and we are supposed to be teaching teenagers to manage these tools, not removing the tools and pretending the problem is solved. A school that bans phones outright is also abandoning any role in digital literacy instruction.

Instructions: Post a substantive 100+ word reply that engages with at least one of the student replies and takes a clear position. Use accurate vocabulary and sentence variety. For more context on the task itself, see our 2026 Academic Discussion guide.

Sample response

Marcus raises a real concern about emergency contact, but I think his framing misses what a well-designed policy actually looks like. The choice is not really between a total ban and full access. It is between a thoughtful tiered restriction and the messy status quo most schools currently have.

In a tiered model, phones would be locked away during direct instruction, where the focus benefit Priya describes is strongest, but available in study halls and at lunch, where the digital literacy and emergency arguments are stronger. This solves both objections at once. Marcus's digital literacy worry only stands if the policy is blanket, which the better proposals on the table are not.

So my position is yes to restriction, but only the granular kind, and I would not support a flat all-day ban.

Rubric breakdown

Scores below are anchored to the official ETS TOEFL iBT 2026 Writing rubric. For the full 1 to 6 scale and CEFR mapping, see our scoring guide and CEFR alignment notes.

What works in this response

• Reframing rather than picking a side. The response treats the debate as a policy-design question instead of a yes-or-no vote, which is the rhetorical move band 5 readers reward most heavily.
• Direct engagement with Marcus by name, paired with a fair reconstruction of his argument before the rebuttal. The rubric explicitly weights named engagement above generic agreement.
• Specific structural vocabulary ("tiered", "blanket", "granular", "status quo") does the heavy lifting that vague intensifiers usually try to do. Using the right technical word once beats using strong adjectives three times.
• Length sits comfortably above the 100-word minimum without padding. Every sentence carries weight, which is more important on this task than hitting a specific count.
• The conclusion qualifies the position ("yes to restriction, but only the granular kind") instead of restating it. That qualification is what marks an honest argument and what separates a band 5 conclusion from a band 4 echo.

How this could become Band 6

Two small moves would close the gap. First, splitting the long second-paragraph sentence into two would tighten the rhythm and remove the one structural strain in the response. Second, replacing "the messy status quo" with a more academically calibrated phrase such as "the inconsistent enforcement most schools currently rely on" would lift the lexical register from band 5 strong to band 6 polished. The reasoning architecture is already at band 6 level; only the surface finish keeps this in band 5 territory. If you want to study where lexical polish makes the largest difference, our 2026 Writing tips walks through this exact transition.

Compare with other Academic Discussion samples