Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · IELTS Summit Mastery · 2026-11-14

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Tourism is one of the fastest growing industries and contributes a great deal to economies around the world. However, the damage tourism can cause to local cultures and the environment is often ignored.

To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Tourism has a great impact on ones social, personal, and cultural environment. It lets you experience such diverse identities and lives of other human beings that exist within you. Tourism lets you know the different rules and regulations people spend their whole lives with. This not only makes you appreciate the different lifestyle but also makes you grateful to experience them. However some people forget the importance of protecting the culture of those who are born with it and often mistake their kindness into forcing their ways upon them.

Tourists like to experience the private culture of a specific society and may post that publically using the help of social media but this may come off as an invasion of privacy of the people who seem to preserve their culture and want to protect it from the new environment. Often cultures seem to include special occasions or festivals that are considered sacred for them. When tourists experience that they may have views or opinions that dont neccessariliy align with the people to whome that culture belongs to. This causes a stir between the two and results in conflicts.

When tourism in encouraged in a specific area, there has to be activities and accomodation of the tourits. By the increasing needs of these people often get forced out of their home for the land for it to be converted into hotels and restaurants to please the needs of tourist. The local people lose their homes with little to no reinforcements for them.

AI examiner evaluation

CriterionBand
Task Achievement / Task Response5.0
Coherence and Cohesion5.5
Lexical Resource5.5
Grammatical Range and Accuracy5.5
Overall5.5

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.0

You address the topic by discussing cultural intrusion and the displacement of residents, and your position suggests that tourism can cause harm when local traditions and homes are not protected. These are relevant points, but the response only partially answers the question: it does not clearly state how far you agree or disagree, and the economic contribution of tourism is not considered. The opening also presents tourism’s benefits, such as appreciating different lifestyles, without explaining how these weigh against the harms. Your examples remain general; for instance, the discussion of sacred festivals would be stronger with a specific illustration and explanation of its effects. State your position directly and develop each main reason with a concrete example and clearer consequences.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The response has a recognisable structure: an introduction followed by paragraphs on cultural effects and pressure on housing. This gives the reader a basic route through your ideas, and words such as “However” and “When” help signal relationships. However, progression is limited because the introduction’s positive view of tourism is not developed or connected to the later arguments, and there is no concluding paragraph to bring your position together. Some links between sentences are unclear, particularly “By the increasing needs of these people often get forced out of their home,” where the relationship between tourism demand and displacement is difficult to follow. Use clearer topic sentences, connect each example to its main point, and finish with a concise conclusion.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

You use relevant topic vocabulary, including “sacred,” “invasion of privacy,” “accommodation,” and “conflicts,” which helps communicate the cultural and social concerns. There is some variety in how you describe tourism’s effects, but several word choices and collocations are inaccurate or awkward, sometimes making the meaning less clear. For example, “experience the private culture” and “forcing their ways upon them” do not express the intended ideas naturally, while “reinforcements” is not the right term for support given to displaced residents. Spelling errors such as “publically,” “neccessariliy,” and “tourits” are also noticeable. Build precision by learning common collocations for cultural respect, land use, and compensation, and proofread spelling.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

You attempt both simple and more complex sentences, including clauses beginning with “However” and “When,” and most of the main ideas can be understood. However, control is uneven, especially in longer sentences. In “This not only makes you appreciate the different lifestyle but also makes you grateful to experience them,” the singular “lifestyle” conflicts with “them.” The sentence beginning “By the increasing needs…” is structurally incomplete, and “When tourism in encouraged” has an incorrect verb form. There are also missing apostrophes in “ones” and “dont,” as well as punctuation issues after introductory linking words. Practise building complete sentences with clear subjects and verbs, then check agreement, articles, and punctuation.

See this exact question answered at other band scores. The same prompt compared across bands.

Browse more IELTS Writing model answers or get your own writing scored by the same AI examiner.