Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · IELTS Summit Mastery · 2026-10-08

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 most prevalent industry and contributing to the economies of the different nations around the world. People roam around the world, exploring different potential in varying niche. It enhances their personal and professional performance in life, which makes their life joyful.

Firsthand, tourism indeed is joyous, but people forget to owe to the nature, and pollutes to different visiting places, such as mountains, beach side areas, hotspot locations and so on. They carry bottles, plastics, and other harmful stuff with them to eat or to use as general, which they throw riverside, roadside or in their way to journey. Which suffocates the nature in future for long term, as increasing industries and infrastructure, requires human resources, rivers are polluted with the industrial chemicalized water and excreta, plastics are non-degradable, causing damage to biodiversity and animals even eat unknowingly, creating illness to the fauna as well. It destroys the peaceful environment of locals and the authority.

On the other hand, tourism is boosting the economies of countries such as of island countries, and some humanitarian works are currently going on by different communities by making committees, awareness is raised in the result of some consequences, which is reducing water, soil and noise pollution simultaneously in related tourism regions. This field is full of adventure, which requires a lot of stuff with them, but youth of some places is taking the accountability for cleaning and spreading awareness through campaigns, educating people via social media and other platforms.

To conclude, the tourism supports the economies of the nations providing employment to locals, their products and cuisine, heritage and culture all over the world, but every person must commit individual accountability, and countries must follow conventional rules and carbon emission rules to protect the Earth from extreme climate change events.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

You address both the economic benefits of tourism and its environmental and cultural costs, and your conclusion makes your position clear: tourism can support livelihoods, but individuals and governments must act responsibly. The examples of litter, polluted rivers, harm to wildlife, and employment for local people are relevant to the question. However, the discussion focuses much more on environmental damage than on harm to local cultures, despite culture being a central part of the prompt. Some points also need fuller explanation: for example, the reference to awareness campaigns does not show clearly how effective they are or how they reduce pollution. Develop both sides of the issue more evenly and support each main claim with a specific example.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

The response has a recognisable overall structure: an introduction, a paragraph on environmental harm, a paragraph on economic benefits and community action, and a conclusion. Linking phrases such as “On the other hand” and “To conclude” help signal the direction of the argument. However, progression within sentences is sometimes difficult to follow, particularly in the long section beginning “Which suffocates the nature in future,” where several effects are joined together without clear relationships. “Firsthand” is also not an effective transition into the first main point, and some references, such as “some consequences” and “this field,” are vague. Use clearer topic sentences, divide complex explanations into shorter units, and make links between claims and examples explicit.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

You attempt a range of topic-related vocabulary, including “biodiversity,” “fauna,” “infrastructure,” “carbon emission,” and “awareness,” which helps convey ideas about tourism and environmental protection. There are also some less common expressions, but several are inaccurate or unnatural and sometimes obscure your meaning. For instance, “most prevalent industry,” “different potential in varying niche,” and “chemicalized water” are not suitable collocations in this context. “Owe to the nature” and “as general” also show imprecise word choice. Aim for natural, precise combinations rather than more elaborate wording: describe tourism as a “major industry,” say visitors “damage natural environments,” and refer to “industrial wastewater.” This greater control would make your ideas clearer.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

You attempt both simple and complex sentence forms, including clauses with “which” and “as,” and the overall meaning is generally recoverable. However, some sentences contain several grammatical problems that make the relationships between ideas hard to follow. For example, “Which suffocates the nature in future for long term” is a fragment, while “as increasing industries and infrastructure, requires human resources” has an unclear clause structure and subject–verb agreement problem. In “tourism indeed is joyous, but people forget,” the adverb placement is awkward, and the sentence beginning “They carry bottles” shifts into a long chain of clauses with weak punctuation. Practise complete sentence structures, agreement, articles, and punctuation, and separate connected ideas when a sentence becomes difficult to control.

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.