Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 21 · 2026-10-06

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 recent years, the whole world population showed a dramatic increase which creates many problems in respect to the basic facilities and shortages such as housing facility. The idea to build tall apartment blocks in large cities is the need of an hour. In my opinion, i partially agree with this point because it also creates some intolerable problems for citizens.

Furthermore, there are several benefits of building tall apartment blocks. First and foremost, tall buildings do not take much place and hundreds of people can live in one place which saves our urban land. In addition, in. this way more individuals who migrate from rular areas with the attention to get standard of living is quite possible dur to the dorms which are provided in less money as compared to the houses.

On the other hand, the demerits of this aspect cannot be ignored. Additionally, when a lot of people live in one building it create serious issues for instance, traffic congestion problems due to increased in population and the decrease in healthcare facilities. Moreover, in the situation of natural hazards like earthquakes, thunderstorms and volcano eruptions have a high risk of human lives. When individuals dramatically increased then it is difficult to maintain disciplne in the city.

In conclusion, living in tall buildings like blocks have some advantages like affordable housing for everyone and get a chance to achieve you dreams easily but the drawbacks should be controlled by our governments attention by taking some useful actions and laws. I firmly believe that it will be positive development if our citizens and government both played their role in the society to maintain the discipline.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

The response addresses all parts of the task by presenting a clear position on whether tall apartment blocks are the best solution for urban housing shortages. The writer's stance that they partially agree is maintained throughout the essay. However, some ideas are under-developed rather than fully extended. For instance, while the benefits of saving urban land are mentioned, the explanation remains somewhat general. Similarly, the counter-arguments regarding natural hazards and infrastructure strain are introduced but lack specific examples or deeper exploration. The main arguments are relevant to the prompt, yet they would benefit from more robust elaboration to push the response into higher territory, as some points tend to over-generalize without sufficient supporting detail.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.5

The essay displays a coherent overall arrangement with a clear progression of ideas from an introduction through to distinct body paragraphs and a conclusion. Paragraphing is used appropriately to separate the advantages and disadvantages of high-rise living. Cohesive devices such as 'Furthermore', 'First and foremost', 'In addition', and 'On the other hand' are employed to structure the response, though some referencing and transitions are occasionally mechanical or slightly faulty, such as the abrupt shift in the final paragraph. While the organizational framework meets the requirements for a logical flow and demonstrates the basic elements of higher coherence bands, the somewhat repetitive linking style and occasional lack of smooth transitional flow prevent it from achieving top-tier cohesion.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The vocabulary used is adequate for the task, allowing the writer to communicate their main ideas about housing and urban development. There are attempts to use less common items and topic-specific vocabulary such as 'urban land', 'traffic congestion', and 'natural hazards'. However, there are noticeable word-choice, word-form, and collocation errors that reflect a limited range. Examples include phrases like 'housing facility' instead of 'housing facilities', 'take much place' instead of 'take up much space', 'rular areas' (spelling), 'with the attention to get' instead of 'with the intention of getting', and 'provided in less money' instead of 'at a lower cost'. These errors stem from a restricted control of lexical features, though they do not severely impede overall communication.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writer employs a mix of simple and complex sentence forms throughout the response, attempting complex structures like conditional clauses and relative clauses. However, there are frequent errors in grammar and punctuation that appear across various sentence types. Issues include subject-verb agreement errors ('the whole world population showed', 'when a lot of people live in one building it create'), missing articles ('in situation of natural hazards'), incorrect preposition use ('increased in population'), and punctuation mishaps such as stray periods within sentences ('in. this way'). While these errors rarely completely obscure the writer's meaning, their persistence across basic and complex patterns keeps the grammatical accuracy firmly at this level, as error-free sentences are not sustained consistently.

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