Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · IELTS Summit Mastery · 2026-08-31

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 industry is one of the major industries in the world however visitors can damage the local culture either or that damage was on purpose or not it still exists so is it being ignored or not? from my point of view yes even if it's not ignored by the locals it's ignored by the media for most of the part and that's mainly connected to phycology and human nature.

To begin with I'm going to start with phycological effect when we think of a vacation our brain connect this word with peaceful feeling for example feeling free of stress or joy and entertainment so if the tourist was told to follow strict rules it will feels more like a mission rather than a vacation and those rules will put more pressure and stress upon the visitor so companies will try their best to make the visitor feel excited about the trip rather than making him feel worried.

Now let's talk about the human nature since we were kids we hated discipline for example studying for exams or bedtimes even though we were aware of the fact that we needed it in order to reach our goals and following rules is one of the hardest types of discipline and that's why we see some visitor ignore the rules even though they are aware of the consequences of their actions.

In conclusion visitor need to be more responsible toward locals culture because they don't just represent themself they also represent the community they came from and locals need to be clear about their rules and redlines at the end of day tourism benefit both the tourists and and the locals and if we want this industry to continue in the future we need to help and care for each other.

AI examiner evaluation

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

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.5

The response addresses the prompt by acknowledging the negative impacts of tourism and providing reasons for why these issues are often ignored. However, the development is somewhat limited. The argument focuses heavily on the 'psychological' aspect of vacations and human nature, which is a narrow interpretation of why environmental or cultural damage is ignored. The position is clear, but the ideas could be more thoroughly supported with concrete examples of how tourism affects specific environments or cultures, rather than focusing primarily on the tourist's mindset. The conclusion attempts to provide a balanced view, but the overall depth of analysis remains at a basic level.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5

The essay is organised into paragraphs, which helps the reader follow the structure. However, the use of cohesive devices is quite mechanical and sometimes repetitive. For instance, the overuse of 'for example' and the lack of sophisticated transition words between paragraphs make the flow feel somewhat disjointed. Referencing is occasionally unclear, such as in the first paragraph where the connection between the 'psychological effect' and the broader topic of tourism damage is not explicitly linked. The progression of ideas is present but lacks the logical sophistication required for a higher band.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The vocabulary is generally adequate for the task but lacks the range and precision expected at higher levels. There are several instances of word-choice errors, such as 'phycology' (intended as 'psychology') and 'either or that damage was on purpose'. The range of vocabulary is limited to common, everyday terms, and there is little attempt to use less common or academic collocations. While the meaning is generally clear, the lack of variety and the spelling errors prevent a higher score in this category.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The essay relies heavily on simple sentence structures and contains frequent grammatical errors. There are issues with punctuation, such as the lack of full stops in the first paragraph, and subject-verb agreement errors, for example, 'visitor need to be' instead of 'visitors need to be'. Complex structures are attempted but often contain errors, such as 'if the tourist was told to follow strict rules it will feels more like a mission'. These errors are frequent and occasionally require the reader to re-read to grasp the intended meaning.

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

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