Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 21 · 2026-09-30

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 5.5)

In many large cities around the world, providing adequate housing for the growing population has become a major challenge. It is often argued that the most effective solution to this problem is to construct tall apartment blocks. I strongly agree with this view because high rise building make efficient use of limited land and provide affordable housing close to city centres.

In big cities, land is limited and expensive. Tall buildings can house hundreds of families on small land. For example, in Karachi, a 10 storey building can provide homes for 40 families whwre only 4 houses could be built. Therefore, vertical housing is most efficient use of land.

Apartments are cheaper than houses and provise facilities like security, parkig, water. Also, people live near city center, near jibs, reducing traffic. By contrast, building houses on city outskirts creates long travel.

However, tall blocks can be crowded and have less privacy. But this can be managed by good design and rules.

In conclusion, although high rise apartments may have some disadvantages such as overcrowding and limited privacy, I strongly agree that building all apartment block is the most effective way to provide sufficient housing in large cities. This is because vertical housinh efficient address land scarcity and offers affordable homes near employment centres, especially in densely populated cities like Karachi. Therefore, government should encourage well planned high rise development.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses the prompt directly, presenting a clear position that you strongly agree with the proposition that building tall apartment blocks is the best way to provide housing in large cities. You support this position with relevant arguments regarding land efficiency, affordability, and proximity to city centres, even including a specific example from Karachi. However, there is a penalty to consider here: the response contains only 229 words, which fails to meet the minimum requirement of 250 words. This under-length impacts the depth of taskful development and leads to a lowered task achievement score. To achieve a higher band, ensure you develop your supporting points more fully to comfortably surpass the word count threshold.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

Your essay demonstrates a clear overall structure with an introduction, body paragraphs addressing land efficiency, affordability, and counter-arguments, followed by a conclusion. Paragraphing is used appropriately to separate distinct ideas. However, logical progression is sometimes hindered by abrupt transitions and brief, under-developed sentences. Cohesive devices are used, but they tend to be basic and somewhat mechanical, such as 'For example', 'Also', and 'By contrast'. Furthermore, referencing is occasionally unclear or slightly disjointed, particularly in the movement between sentences in the second body paragraph. To improve this criterion, try to integrate more sophisticated cohesive phrases and ensure smoother transitions between your supporting ideas and examples.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

You demonstrate an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully using topic-specific terms such as 'adequate housing', 'vertical housing', 'land scarcity', and 'densely populated'. There are, however, several noticeable lexical and spelling errors that affect accuracy, such as 'high rise building' instead of 'high-rise buildings', 'whwre' instead of 'where', 'provise' instead of 'provide', 'parkig', 'jibs' instead of 'jobs', and 'housinh efficient address'. These errors show limited control over word formation and spelling, and occasionally cause slight strain for the reader. To reach a higher band, you should expand your use of less common lexical items and carefully proofread your writing to eliminate spelling and word-choice slips.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

Your writing displays a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, such as 'In many large cities around the world, providing adequate housing for the growing population has become a major challenge.' and 'although high rise apartments may have some disadvantages such as overcrowding and limited privacy, I strongly agree...'. However, there are frequent grammatical errors throughout the text, including missing plural markers ('tall apartment block'), missing articles ('most efficient use', 'government should encourage'), and subject-verb agreement issues ('high rise building make'). Despite these errors, meaning is generally clear and communication is rarely impeded. To improve your grammar score, focus on mastering article usage, pluralisation, and ensuring better control when constructing complex sentences.

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