Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 18 · 2026-10-11

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)

People often search for a change, like migrating from a countryside to cities. Human beings search for better opportunities and sense of security in every aspect of life. Many people are dwelling themselves for a change, it may even be changing the location from a rural countryside to the urban city areas. This leads to having the both positive as well as negative impact.

Better opportunities: We people always are keen to find the new opportunities and competition in our every day life. Similarly, people residing on rural areas dream about finding new opportunities in urban cities. For example: A person from rural town of Nepal, leaving his hometown in order to find new job with high pay in Kathmandu, a urban city.

Facilities: Often people are sick of being deprived from their basic needs of transportation, hospitals and education. Countryside may not be able to fulfill their basic needs lacking of good hospitals, have poor roads conditions and proper education facility.

On the other hand, cities has lots of competitive environment with facilities for jobs availability, education facilities and a better transportation services. Moreover, cities are home to different opportunities.Human beings always want a promising lifestyle and cities are just another place where their dreams might be fulfilled. However, there is concerning issue about the isolation of countryside and overpopulation towards urban cities. Countryside are nowadays empty whereas, urban cities are crowded and full of people. Due to this people are also deprived of the facilities that may be found in cities previously.

Crowded places : As we can observe, there are many people fighting over better life and opportunities. Many of the places are often crowded in cities, for example: temples, hospitals or even schools and colleges. People often have to wait for their turn or have a long queue to get their order places even on restaurants.

High competition: Urban cities are filled with people of different mindset, conflicting over their place on different opportunities. For instance: Fighting over a government jobs, many cities are crowded with the people debating over who should really get the opportunity for government jobs.

In conclusion, the empty countryside demands for it's people to realise that better opportunities are to be created where they live. If everyone moves to urban cities for basic needs, they can never develop the countrysides which can be changed into the place with opportunities as well.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

You discuss both potential benefits of moving to cities, such as access to jobs, hospitals and education, and drawbacks including crowding and the decline of rural communities. The conclusion also gives a relevant recommendation: create opportunities in the countryside. However, the task asks you to decide whether this is a positive or negative development, and your opening says it has “both positive as well as negative impact” without making your overall judgement clear. Several points are introduced but not fully explained: for example, the Nepal example illustrates job-seeking, but does not show its wider effect, and the discussion of competition repeats the idea of limited opportunities. State a clear overall position and develop fewer points with specific consequences or examples.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The response has an identifiable introduction, body discussion and conclusion, and headings such as “Better opportunities” and “High competition” help signal the topics. The ideas are generally relevant, but the progression is not consistently clear: the “Facilities” paragraph is separated from the later discussion of city facilities, while the shift to “On the other hand” does not clearly establish which side of your argument is being contrasted. The repeated short, labelled sections also make the essay feel like a list rather than a connected argument. Some links are awkward or unclear, such as “Due to this people are also deprived…”; explain the cause-and-effect relationship directly. Organise the body into a clear sequence of paragraphs and use linking phrases selectively.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

You attempt a range of topic-related vocabulary, including “opportunities,” “basic needs,” “overpopulation,” “competitive environment” and “isolation of countryside.” This gives you enough language to communicate the main subject, but several word choices and collocations are noticeably unnatural or imprecise, sometimes making the meaning harder to follow. For instance, “dwelling themselves for a change” does not express the intended idea, and “get their order places” is unclear in the restaurant example. Repetition of “opportunities,” “cities” and “people” also limits variety. Build accuracy by learning common word partnerships and choosing precise terms—for example, “rural residents,” “access to services” and “urban overcrowding”—rather than relying on loosely formed phrases.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

You attempt both simple and longer sentence forms, including the contrast beginning “On the other hand” and the conditional “If everyone moves to urban cities…”. However, the range is limited, and errors occur frequently in sentence construction, agreement, articles and plurals. Examples include “cities has,” “Countryside are nowadays empty,” and “a urban city”; these should be “cities have,” “the countryside is,” and “an urban city.” The opening also contains a comma splice in “Many people are dwelling themselves for a change, it may even be changing…”. These errors can make relationships between ideas difficult to follow. Practise building accurate sentences with one main clause and a subordinate clause, then check subject–verb agreement, articles and punctuation.

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