Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · IELTS Summit Mastery · 2026-09-12

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 growing very fast and helps many people to generate a lot of money. However the growth have a side effect. The damage that tourism cause to nature and local tradition is often ignored. I completely agree that people often forget about problem because they only focus on making money.

First of all, tourism harm the enivronment. To welcome tourism, people construct big hotels, builts road network and shops. This often cause trees to cut down and destroys the homes of wild animals. Hotel owners only focus on money rather than clean to the environment like dust bines and trash which is thrown by tourists. For instance, many beautiful place suffer from pollution like Naran & Khagan because hotel throw away the trash and plastic only to grab money quicly by tourists. Authorities also ignore these issues.

Secondly, tourism can ruin local culture. Sometimes, local people change their tradition for the sake of money, in order to dance and entertain tourists to earn money. These individuals often forget their traditional values, young people in these areas might start acting like foreign tourist and forgewt thier own language and history. For example, in Pakistan politician only talk about how much tourist visited over country, but in fact donot have a conversation about the people face by tourisits and the management.

In conclusion, I strongly agree that the bad effects of tourism on nature and culture are ignored. Even though tourism bring money, but slowly its destroying our culture and old history, so its government ressponsibilty to find a way to proctect our environment and traditional values.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.5

The response addresses all parts of the task and presents a clear position throughout, agreeing that the damage caused by tourism is often ignored. The main ideas regarding environmental harm and cultural degradation are relevant and supported with explanations and examples, such as pollution in Naran & Khagan and the impact on local traditions in Pakistan. However, some arguments lack full development and generalisations are sometimes made without deeper nuance, which places the response firmly within Band 6. The position is clearly stated in the introduction and reinforced in the conclusion, fulfilling the core task requirements adequately.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5

The essay displays a coherent overall arrangement with clear paragraphing separating the introduction, two body paragraphs, and the conclusion. Progression is visible through standard cohesive markers like 'First of all,' 'Secondly,' and 'In conclusion.' However, referencing is sometimes unclear, and cohesive devices can feel mechanical or slightly repetitive. For instance, the transition between sentences within the body paragraphs occasionally lacks smooth flow, leading to abrupt shifts in ideas. Paragraphing is used sufficiently and appropriately, but the management of internal cohesion requires more flexibility to reach higher bands.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully attempting less common items such as 'degradation,' 'tradition,' and 'pollution.' However, there are noticeable spelling and word-choice errors throughout the text, including 'enivronment,' 'builts,' 'dust bines,' 'quicly,' and 'ressponsibilty.' These errors do not impede communication, as the reader can easily understand the intended meaning, but they restrict the lexical score. Collocations are sometimes awkward, such as 'grab money quicly by tourists.' Overall, the vocabulary is minimally sufficient to convey the main arguments.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.5

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, utilising conjunctions and dependent clauses such as 'Even though tourism bring money, but slowly its destroying our culture...' There are frequent grammatical errors, particularly with subject-verb agreement ('tourism harm,' 'growth have,' 'hotel throw'), verb tenses ('forgewt thier'), and punctuation. Double connectors ('Even though... but') also occur. While these errors are noticeable and require some effort from the reader, they rarely completely impede communication, supporting a Band 5.5 performance.

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