Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 12 · 2026-10-06

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Today more and more tourists are visiting places where conditions are difficult, such as the Sahara desert or the Antarctic.

What are the benefits and disadvantages for tourists who visit such places?

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

 

Student answer (Band 5.5)

People love travelling and visiting new places to explore the culture, expand their knowledge and learn new things. They often travel to gain information , enjoy the place, food and for their entertainment. Travelling is considered a way to uplift one’s mood. Earlier, people use to travel according to the knowledge of the place and interest. However, now people travel different locations through the viral instagram post and facebook videos. It has been observed that more and more tourists are traveling to places that are not equipped to manage a lot of tourists due to various reasons and challenges.

First of all there are numerous benefits to the local people when tourists visit their place . Tourism creates work opportunities and people earn their livelihood through tourism. To support my view, people traveling to such extreme places like Sahara Desert learn about the culture ,meet people , enjoy food,and try to learn from their daily life experiences to enrich them how to live in difficult situations. It is difficult to bring things and manage the demand of tourists. Due to extreme weather conditions and lack of transportation facilities. They sell items on huge profit including the expenses. Though they are expensive but tourist buy these items and love the handicraft they sell and keep them in their house as a memory.

On the other hand, there are few challenges to travel to such extreme locations. You cannot excess internet everywhere which makes traveling problematic. Digital money doesn’t work at these locations. If lost it is very difficult to find out route to your destination. Sometime, local people are also not around to help. Even language becomes a barrier in most of the circumstances.

In my view point people should not travel to such destinations that are not equipped to handle a lot of tourists. Government should keep a record of people traveling and providing necessary items. I remember once we travelled to Rajasthan and my brother got lost and his phone was not in network range. It took us 7 hours to locate him . He was not able to contact anyone of us because local people were not understanding the language and they were not ready to help.We all were very disappointed and my mother panicked a-lot during that time. We should always travel to places that are tourist friendly.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses the prompt by discussing both benefits and disadvantages of visiting difficult tourist destinations, but the ideas remain somewhat limited and under-developed. While you mention that tourism creates work opportunities and helps people learn about daily life in the Sahara Desert, this point is tangled with other concepts rather than being fully extended. Similarly, the disadvantages focusing on lack of internet and digital money are mentioned briefly without deep elaboration. Your personal stance appears in the conclusion where you suggest people should avoid such places, but this position could have been introduced and maintained more clearly throughout the essay. To reach a higher level, ensure that every main idea is thoroughly explained and supported with relevant examples rather than shifting quickly between topics.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

There is some organisation present, with paragraphs dedicated to the introduction, benefits, disadvantages, and conclusion, but the overall progression lacks absolute clarity. Cohesive devices are sometimes mechanical or repetitive, such as starting paragraphs with 'First of all' and 'On the other hand'. Referencing is occasionally unclear, as seen in sentences where pronouns do not have an unambiguous antecedent. Paragraphing is utilised to separate main themes, but the internal flow within paragraphs needs more sophisticated linking to guide the reader smoothly from one point to the next. Improving logical transitions and ensuring precise referencing will help create a more seamless and cohesive essay structure.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The vocabulary used is minimally adequate for the task, providing a sufficient range to discuss travel and tourism, but it features noticeable errors that sometimes cause difficulty. There are instances of awkward word choice and collocation, such as 'sell items on huge profit' instead of making a profit, and misuse of terms like 'excess internet' instead of access. Word form and spelling errors also appear, though they do not completely impede communication. To elevate your lexical score, incorporate a wider variety of less common vocabulary items with careful attention to natural collocations, precise word forms, and appropriate contextual usage.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The response displays a limited range of sentence structures, with frequent reliance on simple sentences or attempts at complex structures that contain errors. There are noticeable grammatical inaccuracies throughout the text, such as tense inconsistencies in phrases like 'people use to travel' instead of used to travel, missing articles, and preposition errors within grammatical patterns. Punctuation issues, such as spacing errors around commas and full stops, are also present. These frequent errors in grammar and mechanics can cause some difficulty for the reader and restrict the overall control of complex grammatical forms. A stronger focus on accurate verb tenses, subject-verb agreement, and reliable complex sentence formation is necessary for improvement.

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