Band 5.0 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.0 · Cambridge IELTS 21 · 2026-09-16

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

The best way to provide enough homes in large cities is to build tall apartment blocks.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?

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

Student answer (Band 5.0)

In big cities building tall residential buildings could provide enough houses for people. Overall i agree with this solution, this can be proved with a couple of reasons.

Firstly, seprate housing construction requires more land for individual use, which effects badly on natural resources (trees,water). To overcome a land issue, a single tall building can accomodate dozens of families together, additional facilitiess facilities such as park, gym, private parkings, and departmental stores can substituted nearby. This will reduced their everyday hustles. For example Dubai introduced this concept to deal with their land issues by building tall apartments.

Secondly cost of seprate homes construction can be significantly more than buildings, with additional private insurances for each facility, ranging from thousands to millions of dollars.This cost element can have a substantial effect on individual's savings.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 4.0

The response clearly states an overall position agreeing with the prompt and presents relevant ideas regarding land conservation and construction costs. However, the severe word count deficit severely limits task achievement. The text contains only 133 words, which falls well short of the 250-word minimum requirement for Task 2. Consequently, the ideas are under-developed, lack sufficient extension, and leave the argument incomplete. For instance, the reference to Dubai and the discussion on construction costs are abrupt and lack the necessary depth and examples required for a fully realized academic essay. Under the official descriptors, this lack of adequate development and failure to meet the minimum length requirement places the task achievement score firmly at Band 4.0.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.0

The text demonstrates a basic organizational structure with an introduction, two body paragraphs, and a logical progression of ideas moving from environmental reasons to financial considerations. Cohesive devices such as 'Firstly,' and 'Secondly' are used to structure the response, and referencing is generally understandable. However, paragraphing and overall cohesion are basic and somewhat mechanical. The transition between sentences can feel abrupt, and there is no concluding paragraph to wrap up the discussion. Because the overall arrangement shows coherent tendencies despite the very short text, it satisfies the criteria for Band 5.0, where some basic organization is present but cohesion is noticeably limited and repetitive.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.0

The student uses a sufficient range of vocabulary for basic communication, attempting some less common items such as 'residential buildings', 'natural resources', 'accommodate', and 'substantial effect'. However, there are notable spelling errors ('seprate' instead of separate, 'effects' instead of affects, 'facilitiess', 'parkings', 'reduced') and awkward word choices or collocations ('this can be proved with a couple of reasons', 'hustles' instead of hassles). These lexical inaccuracies and repetitive phrasing restrict the range and precision needed for higher bands. The vocabulary is minimally adequate to convey simple meaning, aligning well with the descriptors for Band 5.0.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The essay displays a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, such as 'To overcome a land issue, a single tall building can accomodate dozens of families together...' and conditional or relative clauses. However, grammatical accuracy is weak, with frequent errors including punctuation issues, missing articles, and subject-verb agreement problems (e.g., 'This will reduced', 'cost of seprate homes construction can be significantly more than buildings', and lower-case 'i'). There are also run-on sentence structures and comma splices, such as 'Overall i agree with this solution, this can be proved with a couple of reasons.' These frequent errors cause some difficulty for the reader and reflect a Band 5.0 grammatical profile.

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

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