Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 21 · 2026-10-02

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)

The most efficient way to accommodate maximum people in mega cities is to costruct highrise apartment buildings. I am strongly agree with this idea because urban areas has limited land. So the development of highrise appartment building can save the land and, it also reduce the unrestricted expansion of cities.

In major cities the free land is limited to built detached houses. Many people need to live in city centres for their studies and work so a large number of residency appartments are require to accommodate the population. These multistores buildings can be constructed on small land with many appartments.

These verticle housing building are constructed in the city center where people can easly access the facilites, so the unplaned urban sprawling can be minimized. The mega cities could developed in a proper structure.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.0

It is critical to note first that this response fails to meet the minimum word count requirement of 250 words, stopping at only 134 words. Regarding the content, the essay addresses the task only partially. Your position is presented in the opening paragraph where you state agreement with the statement, but the ideas that follow are extremely limited and under-developed. You mention that urban areas have limited land and that highrise buildings can prevent sprawling, but these points are stated rather than extended with specific explanations or relevant examples. To reach a higher level, you would need to write significantly more, thoroughly exploring your main points with detailed supporting arguments and fully developed examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

There is some basic organisation in your writing, as you attempt to divide your thoughts into paragraphs, but there is no clear overall progression of ideas. The transitions between your sentences feel mechanical, and referencing is sometimes unclear, such as how subsequent sentences loosely attach to your opening premise. While you do use basic cohesive devices like 'So' and 'In major cities', the overall linking of ideas is inadequate and repetitive, making the flow somewhat choppy. To improve cohesion and logical flow, you should ensure each paragraph builds logically upon the previous one, utilizing a wider range of appropriate transition signals to guide the reader smoothly through your arguments.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

Your vocabulary range is limited but minimally adequate for expressing basic ideas. You attempt some topic-specific terms like 'mega cities', 'highrise apartment buildings', and 'urban sprawling', but there are noticeable errors in word choice, word form, and spelling throughout the text. For instance, 'costruct' is misspelled, 'highrise appartment building' contains a spelling error, 'residency appartments' uses a less natural collocation, and 'verticle housing building' contains errors in spelling and word form. These inaccuracies cause some difficulty for the reader and prevent the vocabulary from feeling natural or precise. To achieve a higher band, you need to expand your range of less common lexical items and pay careful attention to spelling and accurate word combinations.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

Your grammatical range is quite limited, consisting mostly of simple sentences alongside a few basic attempts at complex structures that are often faulty. For example, you write 'urban areas has limited land', which contains a subject-verb agreement error, and 'I am strongly agree', which uses an incorrect verb pattern instead of 'I strongly agree'. There are frequent errors in articles, prepositions, and plurals, such as 'maximum people', 'to built', and 'are require'. These frequent errors can cause difficulty for the reader. To improve your grammar score, you need to demonstrate a greater variety of complex sentence structures while maintaining good control over basic grammatical forms, tense consistency, and subject-verb agreement.

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

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