Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 21 · 2026-10-03

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)

Building a tall apartments is the best option to provided enough houses to live in larger cities.I believe that such a trend has more benefits than it's drawback.

The first benefits of this type of housing is to save spaces, because appartments allows many families to lives in one building .This type of houses are more affordable to buying or rainting an individual house, because you are rentaing or purcahasing a single appatrtment not a whole building like if you want to build a house or purchasing you need to pay for the land also which is a big cost . It have better facilities and security, because many people living in the small area so it's easy to manage and prviding them security and facilities.

On the downside, the fact that this type of homes have less privacy, because families living too close together. There were limited space not have gardens or large rooms for children or elder people to send there time . There were also many restrictions and rules about pets, renovation ,noise or using common areas in a majoe city can be extermely expensive to buy our own house.

Overall, the apartmetn building is the good option to provide enough sapce to live people in large cities, but there were saveral disadvantages also.

AI examiner evaluation

CriterionBand
Task Achievement / Task Response5.5
Coherence and Cohesion5.5
Lexical Resource5.0
Grammatical Range and Accuracy5.0
Overall5.5

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses the prompt by discussing the benefits and drawbacks of tall apartment blocks, presenting a clear position that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. However, the ideas remain somewhat limited and under-developed, lacking sufficient extension with relevant examples or deep analysis. Furthermore, the length requirement is not met, as the response contains only 217 words, falling short of the 250-word minimum. This limited development and insufficient length keep the score at this level, as key points such as affordability and space-saving are mentioned rather than fully explored.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

There is a basic logical structure with an introduction, body paragraphs addressing advantages and disadvantages, and a brief conclusion. However, there is a lack of clear overall progression, and cohesive devices are repetitive or inadequately used. For instance, the transition between ideas relies heavily on simple repetitive connectors like 'because' and 'this type of'. Paragraphing is attempted, but internal cohesion within paragraphs feels disjointed, making the flow somewhat mechanical and difficult to follow smoothly throughout.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The vocabulary range is limited but minimally adequate to convey the basic message. There are frequent noticeable errors in word choice, spelling, and word formation, such as 'appartment' instead of 'apartment', 'rainting' instead of 'renting', 'purcahasing', 'appatrtment', and 'majoe' instead of 'major'. These errors, alongside awkward collocations like 'send there time' instead of 'spend their time', can cause some difficulty for the reader and reflect a restricted lexical repertoire for an academic task.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writer demonstrates a limited range of structures, relying mostly on simple sentences and basic complex forms that are frequently faulty. There are frequent grammatical errors involving subject-verb agreement and pluralisation, such as 'Building a tall apartments', 'appartments allows', 'This type of houses', and 'there were limited space'. Additionally, tense consistency is occasionally disrupted. These frequent errors in grammar and punctuation cause considerable difficulty for the reader and prevent the text from achieving a higher band.

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