Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 21 · 2026-10-14

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 the most appropiate way to provide the homes in large cities. I'm agreed that there should be tall apartment blocks in big cities.

The amount of people living in the cities are much more greater than the people living in rural areas. A lof of people moves to cities for better education and greater career opportunities. Therefore there should be a better living place for those people. When pupolation is being increased but the area remained the same for cities, so this is the best way to build the tall apartments. Those tall apartments would cover the same space as a single house take. But due to huge tall building on the same area, there may live upto 200+ families. Vehicle parking is the another issue in big cities, which can be solved by making the undergroud parking in those tall building for the vehicles which does not requires any extra space.

Further more, people have to travel a lot to buy different things, but due to huge space, this issue can also be solved by making the shop on the ground floor so each and everything is avaible under the one roof. Although there are so many advantages of this the tall buiding, but there are some disadvantages as well. Like sometimes due to earthquake the whole tall builing may collapse. Also, the families living in the surroundings, may face a privacy issue due to these tall building as their privacy may get compromised.

In conclusion, there should be tall building in the big cities to provide the enough homes.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.5

Your position is clear: you agree that tall apartment blocks are an effective way to provide homes in large cities, and you give relevant reasons, including limited land, housing more families on the same footprint, parking, and access to shops. You also acknowledge drawbacks such as earthquake risk and reduced privacy, so the response addresses both the proposal and its limitations. This meets the task well, though some points are asserted rather than fully explained. For example, the claim that ground-floor shops put “each and everything” under one roof needs a specific explanation of how this benefits residents, and the earthquake concern could be balanced with measures such as safety standards. Developing these points more precisely would make the argument more complete and convincing.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

The response has a recognisable overall structure: an introduction states your view, the body paragraphs present supporting reasons and drawbacks, and the conclusion restates your position. Ideas generally progress from population pressure to practical features of apartment buildings. However, the second body paragraph combines the shopping benefit with disadvantages, which makes the shift in focus abrupt. Some linking is also mechanical or unclear, particularly “When population is being increased but the area remained the same for cities, so…” and “Although there are so many advantages … but…”. Use clearer topic sentences and separate the advantages from the counterpoints. More precise referencing would also help readers follow what “this issue” refers to.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

You use vocabulary relevant to urban housing, including “career opportunities,” “underground parking,” “earthquake,” and “privacy issue,” and the main meaning is usually understandable. However, the range is limited and several word-choice, collocation, and spelling errors are noticeable, which restricts precision. Examples include “the most appropriate way to provide the homes,” “huge tall building,” and “each and everything is available under the one roof.” There are also repeated forms such as “tall building” and “big cities,” alongside misspellings including “pupolation,” “avaible,” and “builing.” Aim for more natural academic phrasing and check spelling carefully; this will make your ideas clearer and more fluent.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

You attempt both simple and more complex sentence forms, including a conditional idea about population growth and a concession beginning “Although.” The overall meaning can generally be followed, but grammatical control is inconsistent, and errors occur across sentence patterns. For example, “The amount of people … are” has a subject–verb agreement problem, while “I'm agreed” uses an incorrect verb form. In “there may live upto 200+ families,” the word order is awkward, and “the area remained the same” does not fit the surrounding present-time argument. Some sentences also join clauses in ways that make their structure difficult to follow. Practise accurate agreement, verb forms, articles, and clause linking while retaining your attempts at complex sentences.

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

Browse more IELTS Writing model answers or get your own writing scored by the same AI examiner.