Band 4.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer
Overall Band Score: 4.5 · Cambridge IELTS 21 · 2026-10-01
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 4.5)
To begin with, Manufacturing began at 15% in 1960 and experienced a sharp increase peaking at 20M in 1980. Following this, it dropped steadily to 17M by 2000 and then levelled off to finish at13M by 2020. In contrast, Healthcare followed different pattern, rose steadily over the next decade to reach 5M in 1980 from 2M in 1960. This growth soared to 11M by 2000, before the growth plateaued slightly, finishing at a peak of 16M by 2020.
AI examiner evaluation
| Criterion | Band |
|---|---|
| Task Achievement / Task Response | 2.5 |
| Coherence and Cohesion | 3.5 |
| Lexical Resource | 5.5 |
| Grammatical Range and Accuracy | 6.0 |
| Overall | 4.5 |
Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 2.5
The response is completely off-topic for the assigned question. The prompt asks whether tall apartment blocks are the best way to provide housing in large cities, but the student's text discusses manufacturing and healthcare trends from a graph or chart, indicating a severe mix-up with Task 1. Furthermore, the response is severely under length, containing only seventy-eight words, which falls far short of the two hundred and fifty-word minimum requirement. Consequently, the content fails to address any part of the task prompt, resulting in a very low assessment for this criterion.
Coherence and Cohesion: Band 3.5
Although the text contains some transitional markers such as 'To begin with' and 'In contrast', the overall organization is entirely unsuited to the essay task. The paragraphing is inappropriate for an essay, and there is no logical progression connecting the ideas to the topic of urban housing. Cohesive devices are used mechanically to link unrelated data points, and referencing is confusing due to the completely irrelevant subject matter. To improve, the student must learn to structure an essay logically around a central thesis statement that directly answers the prompt.
Lexical Resource: Band 5.5
The student demonstrates an adequate range of vocabulary for describing trends and statistics, utilizing terms such as 'experienced a sharp increase', 'peaking', 'levelled off', and 'plateaued'. However, there are minor lexical issues, such as missing spaces in 'at13M' and a missing article in 'followed different pattern'. While these words and phrases are used reasonably well, they belong to a Task 1 response rather than an essay discussing urban housing solutions. To achieve a higher band, the student needs to build a lexical field related to architecture, urban planning, and housing.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 6.0
The response displays a good mix of simple and complex sentence structures, including phrases like 'rose steadily over the next decade to reach 5M in 1980 from 2M in 1960' and 'before the growth plateaued slightly'. Grammatical control is generally quite strong with accurate past tense verb forms and correct prepositions inside temporal patterns, and errors are rare enough that they do not impede understanding. The main limitation is the narrow range of structures deployed due to the extremely short length of the text. To progress further, the writer should incorporate a wider variety of advanced grammatical structures within a fully developed essay.
See this exact question answered at other band scores. The same prompt compared across bands.
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