Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · IELTS Summit Mastery · 2026-09-30

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 is growing very fastly nowadays and it is a major source of money for many country. However, tourism also causes many problems for local culture and nature, but people usually ignoring them I completely agree with this opinion because tourism creates pollution, and changes local traditions.

First of all, tourism creates a lot of environmental problem. When many people visit a tourist place, they throw trash on the roads and beaches. This make the environment dirty and ruin natural beauty. For example in many famous beach places plastic waste and pollution kill ocean animals and destroy coral reefs. Also, governments build big modern hotels and roads in forests which cuts down many trees. Governments ignore these problems because they want to earn more money from tourists.

Secondly, tourism damages local cultures and old customs. When foreign tourists come local people start changing there traditional lifestyle to copy them. Traditional dances, clothes, and festivals become just a business entertainment to make quick money. Furthermore, small local shops and cultural markets are replaced by international fast-food restaurants and hotels. Because of this, unique historic towns lose their original traditions and local culture slowly disappears

In conclusion, I agree that the damage of tourism to nature and local culture is often ignored by people. Money is important, but governments should also take steps to protect nature and local traditions for the fature.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The student addresses all parts of the task and presents a clear position throughout, agreeing that tourism damages cultures and the environment and that these issues are ignored. Relevant ideas are presented, such as environmental pollution and the commercialisation of cultural traditions, with examples provided like plastic waste and coral reefs. However, the response falls short of the minimum length requirement, containing only 230 words rather than the required 250 words. This under-length impacts the full development of ideas, preventing the response from reaching higher bands. To improve, the student must ensure all prompts meet the word count threshold and expand further on their supporting arguments. Band score: 5.5.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The essay is divided into a clear introduction, two body paragraphs, and a conclusion, showing an overall logical organisation. The progression of ideas is fairly clear, moving from environmental impacts to cultural degradation. However, cohesive devices are sometimes mechanical or overused, such as 'First of all' and 'Secondly'. Paragraphing is generally appropriate, but referencing is occasionally weak, such as 'people usually ignoring them' lacking a proper verb structure. While the text has a coherent overall arrangement, the lack of sophisticated cohesive devices and occasional awkward transitions place it solidly at a Band 6.0 level.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The student demonstrates an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully using terms like 'tourist place', 'natural beauty', 'traditional lifestyle', and 'commercial markets'. However, there are notable lexical errors and unnatural word choices, such as 'growing very fastly' (instead of rapidly), 'many country' (grammatical/lexical slip for countries), and 'business entertainment'. Spelling errors like 'fature' in the final paragraph also detract from the quality. The vocabulary is minimally adequate to convey the message, but inaccuracies in word choice and word forms prevent a higher score. Band score: 5.5.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

The response features a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, such as 'When many people visit a tourist place, they throw trash on the roads and beaches.' There are several grammatical errors throughout the text, including 'people usually ignoring them' (missing auxiliary verb), 'This make the environment dirty' (subject-verb agreement error), 'For example in many famous beach places' (missing punctuation/comma), and 'changing there traditional lifestyle' (wrong homophone: their). Although these errors do not severely impede communication, they occur with enough frequency to restrict the score to Band 5.5.

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

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