Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 18 · 2026-10-06

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

In many countries around the world, rural people are moving to cities, so the population in the countryside is decreasing.

Do you think this is a positive or a negative development?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

 

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Migration has always been practiced in terms for better amenities and for employment opportunities. It has become worldwide issue to address. However, there has been escalation in rural people migrating towards urban societies leading to huge decline in the population of the countryside. Every coin has two sides and further essay will unveil both the sides.

First and foremost, the major cause for urbanisation is the varied amount of opportunites being provided to the rural folks. They migrate for better amenities for their families to provide them better facilities in terms of better food, better education to their kids, to facilitate them with the better lifestyle which is not possible by residing in countryside. In order to to receive better hospital facilities which are not feasible in the countryside people tend to travel to receive updated treatments.

However, this had sky-rocketed the demands for accomodation in urban area and leading to exceeding prices of the house. More urbanisation has declined the population in the rural area which have caused decrease in the number of villages and village-life. Residents of countryside are deteriorating at a greater pace.

To recapitulate, people should migrate from countryside to cities for personal as well as professional growth. Untill and unless there is genuine need for migration one should not rush towards the cities just for the sake of expericing city life and its benefits. However, the government should make sure that better facilities being provided in the countryside so that people dont find a need to migrate to city.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses the prompt by discussing why people move from rural areas to cities, identifying key drivers such as employment and amenities. However, the position is somewhat unclear because the introduction states the essay will unveil both sides of the coin, yet the body paragraphs focus almost exclusively on the push and pull factors of urbanisation rather than providing a balanced evaluation of whether this development is ultimately positive or negative. Consequently, some ideas remain limited and under-developed, such as the brief mention of village-life declining without sufficient elaboration. To reach a higher level, the writer needs to present a fully developed, consistent position throughout and explore all parts of the prompt with greater depth and balance.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

There is a coherent overall arrangement with a clear attempt to structure the essay into an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Paragraphing is used logically to separate different ideas, such as the causes of urbanisation in the second paragraph and its consequences in the third. However, cohesion can feel mechanical at times, and referencing is occasionally unclear, as seen in phrases like 'this had sky-rocketed' where the exact antecedent is slightly loose. Transitional devices are sometimes repetitive or over-used, such as starting multiple paragraphs with contrastive or additive markers. To improve, the writer should employ a more flexible and natural range of cohesive devices and ensure smoother progression between sentences and paragraphs.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The writer demonstrates an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, attempting less common items such as 'escalation', 'urbanisation', and 'deteriorating'. However, there are noticeable errors in word choice, collocation, and word form that occasionally cause minor confusion, such as writing 'opportunites' instead of opportunities, 'accomodation' instead of accommodation, and using awkward phrases like 'residents of countryside are deteriorating'. Spelling errors also occur, which prevent the vocabulary score from rising. To achieve a higher band, the writer must expand their lexical repertoire with greater precision, pay closer attention to natural collocations, and eliminate basic spelling mistakes.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

The response exhibits a limited range of structures, relying mostly on simple sentences alongside a few attempts at complex forms which are often faulty, such as in the clause 'In order to to receive better hospital facilities which are not feasible in the countryside people tend to travel'. There are frequent errors in grammar and punctuation, including missing articles ('in urban area', 'in rural area'), preposition errors, and tautological phrasing like 'Untill and unless there is genuine need'. These errors require some effort from the reader to parse. To progress, the writer needs to incorporate a wider variety of error-free complex sentence structures and improve basic grammatical accuracy, particularly regarding article usage and subject-verb agreement.

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