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)

Building tall apartment blocks is best possible way to meet accomodation requirements. I agree to the statement to some extent. With the rapid increase in population, housing requirements are increasing. Arranging separate accomodation for every family is nearly impossible. Land covered with trees is being utilised for residential colonies. Fertile land is being sold to property dealers to make housing societies. As a result, it has become difficult to fulfill food requirements of people by locally grown crops. Government has to import several eating items, pay heavy duty taxes which flares up the product price. Poor and low middle class people suffer from hunger as they cannot buy expensive food. They can hardly manage their routine expenses. To avoid such situations, building tall apartment blocks is a good option. This helps to accomodate more people in less space. Tall apartments require less land and can provide accomodation to more families. However, there are some disadventages as well. Tall apartments have some drawbacks including severe weather conditions for top floor residents, shared parking and terrace. For sick peple, it is difficult to take stairs if there is no elevator in building. Natural disasters such as earthquake can destroy tall buildings more easily than a single storey building. I personally faced this situation while living at seventh floor in a fifteen storey building. In 2005, when 7.6 magnitude earthquake hits the building, it shattered into pieces. Many people took last breath and left the world. This irrepairable loss left many orphans empty-handed. Goverment should ensure that multi-storey apartments undergo yearly inspection. This will help in building public confidence and promoting tall apartment blocks for accomodation.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

The response addresses all parts of the task by stating a position that agrees to some extent with the statement. Relevant ideas are presented, such as agricultural land preservation, population growth, and housing efficiency, alongside some disadvantages like natural disasters and accessibility. However, some ideas are under-developed or less fully explored. For instance, the discussion on agricultural land and food prices moves quickly through several causes and effects without deep elaboration, and the negative points are presented as a list rather than being fully extended. The position is clear throughout, but the depth of development prevents it from reaching a higher level.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.0

There is a coherent overall arrangement of ideas, starting with an introduction and position, moving through arguments for tall buildings, transitioning to disadvantages, and concluding with a recommendation. However, cohesion is sometimes faulty or mechanical. The paragraphing is weak, as almost the entire essay is lumped into a single block of text rather than being broken down into logical paragraphs for introduction, advantages, disadvantages, and conclusion. Furthermore, referencing and cohesive transitions between sentences are occasionally abrupt, such as moving directly from personal earthquake anecdotes to government policy without smooth linking devices.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The writer uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully attempting less common items and topic-specific terminology such as 'residential colonies', 'property dealers', and 'magnificent/magnitude earthquake'. However, there are some inaccuracies in word choice, spelling, and word form that reflect limitations. For example, 'accomodation' is misspelled, 'eating items' is an unnatural collocation for food items, and 'disadventages' contains a spelling error. While these errors do not seriously impede communication, they restrict the vocabulary score.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 6.0

The writing demonstrates a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, utilizing structures like conditional clauses and relative clauses, as seen in 'When 7.6 magnitude earthquake hits the building, it shattered into pieces.' There are some errors in grammar and punctuation, particularly missing articles ('Government has to import', 'if there is no elevator in building', 'living at seventh floor') and minor subject-verb agreement or tense slips ('earthquake hits' instead of hit). Nonetheless, these errors are relatively infrequent and rarely impede overall communication, allowing the sentence structures to remain generally functional.

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