The world has seen an enormous increase in flights for leisure, business and commercial purposes around the world over recent years. What do you think are the main advantages and disadvantages of such flights? Do you think flights should be taxed more?
Sample Response
Due to globalisation, a paradigm shift of people's lifestyle and expansion of tourism and international commerce, cheap and frequent flights all around the world is quite common nowadays which offers both advantages and disadvantages. In this essay, I shall examine both positive and negative aspects of such flights before drawing a reasonable conclusion. With regards to advantages, frequent flights have made the air travel affordable for many and as a consequence, more people can enjoy the fast and flexible journey. Increasing flights also expand the tourism and business opportunities and thus indirectly creates more job opportunities. Moreover, people have more places to visit, venture in new business opportunities, avail advanced medical facilities in developed countries and learn more by travelling. The frequent travels, in a way, reduce the cultural gaps among people of different countries and bring nations together. Last but not least, many multinational companies can run their operations smoothly across cities due to easily-available air travel and this has a direct impact on creating more employment scopes. On the other hand, detrimental effects of the rapid increase in air travel cannot be ignored. The amount of air pollution it causes is quite alarming. A single flight emits a huge amount of carbon dioxide to the air contributing to the greenhouse effect. Furthermore, airports in cities hamper the peace of local people and increase the possibility of terrorist attacks. Many experts suggest that one way to check the negative consequences of increasing air travel is to impose more tax. Though this might seem a reasonable solution, I, however, disagree. More effective solutions like introducing eco-friendly jet fuel and tight security should be in place rather than increasing the tax which would only burden mass people to pay more for their travel. To conclude, ever-increasing air travel has some negative outcomes like air and sound pollution and threat to the national security. However, imposing a heavy tax is not a viable solution to this and cheap and frequent flights have facilitated people in many ways which are a timely demand of modern people.
IELTS Writing Correction
- 1. Use fixed preposition phrase Original: regards Suggested revision: regard Why it matters: 'With regard to' is the correct fixed expression.
- 2. Remove unnecessary article Original: the air travel Suggested revision: air travel Why it matters: 'Air travel' is an uncountable general concept and does not take 'the' here.
- 3. Use natural travel phrase Original: journey Suggested revision: travel Why it matters: 'Travel' naturally describes the general benefit rather than one specific journey.
- 4. Clarify increasing frequency Original: Increasing flights Suggested revision: More frequent flights Why it matters: The revision makes frequency, rather than the flights themselves, the increasing feature.
- 5. Remove unnecessary article Original: the tourism and business opportunities Suggested revision: tourism and business opportunities Why it matters: The general plural categories do not require the definite article.
- 6. Fix subject agreement Original: creates Suggested revision: create Why it matters: The plural subject 'flights' requires the base verb 'create'.
- 7. Use opportunity collocation Original: venture in new business opportunities Suggested revision: pursue new business opportunities Why it matters: 'Pursue opportunities' is the natural formal collocation.
- 8. Use access verb Original: avail Suggested revision: access Why it matters: 'Access' correctly expresses obtaining the benefit of medical facilities.
- 9. Use uncountable travel noun Original: The frequent travels Suggested revision: Frequent travel Why it matters: 'Travel' is uncountable when referring to the activity generally.
- 10. Use natural cultural phrase Original: gaps Suggested revision: divides Why it matters: 'Cultural divides' is the natural phrase for separation between groups.
- 11. Remove incorrect hyphen Original: easily-available Suggested revision: easily available Why it matters: An adverb ending in '-ly' is not hyphenated before the adjective it modifies.
- 12. Use employment collocation Original: scopes Suggested revision: opportunities Why it matters: 'Employment opportunities' is the standard expression for potential jobs.
Suggested Rewrites
- regards regard
- the air travel air travel
- journey travel
- Increasing flights More frequent flights
- the tourism and business opportunities tourism and business opportunities
- creates create
Why this response received Band 6.5
The essay addresses advantages, disadvantages, and taxation directly, and its strongest feature is the clear rejection of higher taxes alongside alternative solutions. Its main limitation is presentation and precision: the entire response forms one dense paragraph, many benefits are listed rather than developed, and frequent awkward expressions weaken authority. Prioritise clear paragraphing and deeper explanation of the most important advantage and disadvantage.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Detailed feedback by IELTS writing criterion after the annotated essay.
Task Response
All parts of the task are addressed with a clear position on taxation and several relevant advantages, disadvantages, and alternatives.
Develop the strongest economic benefit and environmental cost in more depth instead of listing many brief advantages.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response progresses from benefits to harms and taxation, but the lack of paragraph breaks creates a dense structure and linking is often mechanical.
Use separate paragraphs for the introduction, advantages, disadvantages, tax position, and conclusion, each with one clear central focus.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is varied enough to discuss tourism, business, pollution, security, and policy, but inaccurate collocations occur frequently.
Use natural phrases such as “access medical care,” “employment opportunities,” “emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” and “ordinary travellers.”
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A range of complex structures is attempted, but agreement, article, preposition, and relative-clause errors recur throughout.
Check subject-verb agreement and sentence boundaries, particularly when singular and plural references change within long sentences.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
The world has seen an enormous increase in flights for leisure, business and commercial purposes around the world over recent years. What do you think are the main advantages and disadvantages of such flights? Do you think flights should be taxed more?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.