In some countries, nowadays more and more people are choosing to live alone than in the past. Do you think this is a positive or a negative development?
Sample Response
In recent yearsIn the recent years, most people, particularly in developed countries, are likely to optlikely to opt for living independently. Although living solo come along with several drawbacks, I would consider this more of a positive development. For several reasons, living alone may have some drawbacks. Firstly, living independently can be extremely costly as life is becoming increasingly complex and property prices are skyrocketingproperty price is just skyrocketing. This has created a difficult situation in finding accommodationan accommodation at a reasonable price. For this reason, single occupants may have to work unbelievably hard to make ends meetmake their ends meet. Being single meansBeing a singleton has meant that they cannot expect any financial or moral support from family or relatives in most cases. Lone occupants are more likely to experience depression, anxiety and uncertainty because they bear all household responsibilitieswith bearing all household responsibilities on top of maintaining a working lifepursuing a work life than family-oriented people. As a result, single people tend to lead a hectic as well as burdensome life with having a feeling of being resented and anguished and therefore resulting an unhealthy lifestyle. On the other hand, I believe that people leadingpeople, leading a life as single dwellers are the luckiestthe luckiest one. A sense of freedom with a high degree of privacyan acute privacy is something considered as the most desirable element of a happy life. This is the main reason why single occupants tendsingle occupant tends to be seen as successful members of societya successful peer of the society. Because living a life on their own allows them to invest precious timea precious time in the developmentdevelopment growth and shapingshaping out their personality. Furthermore, single people are likely to attend more public social affairs, thus allowing cities and urban areas to reinvigorate as they spend more money on holiday-making, doing outdoor activities or usingsurfing other services compared to their couple counterparts. Finally, if more people became independent, the more they live greener by living in apartments or near to towns instead of living in suburb houses and commuting to work from far away stretched distances. To sum up, going solo may have some disadvantages but I would argue that this development should be seen as progressa progress.
Why this response received Band 6.0
The response presents a clear preference and considers both the disadvantages and advantages of living alone, with several relevant lines of argument. Its main limitation is that some claims are asserted or expressed unclearly, while frequent grammatical and collocational errors reduce precision. The highest priority is to develop fewer benefits with specific, credible support and then proofread sentence structures, articles, and word combinations.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
A clear positive position is maintained, and both sides are addressed, although several benefits are insufficiently supported or only loosely justified.
Develop the strongest positive arguments with concrete explanations or examples and clarify the causal link in the environmental point.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response progresses from disadvantages to advantages and a conclusion, but some long or fragmentary sentences weaken the flow within the single extended paragraph.
Use distinct paragraphs for the introduction, each main idea, and the conclusion, with clearer sentence-level referencing.
Lexical Resource
There is a reasonably broad vocabulary for independence, finance, wellbeing, and social life, but frequent inaccurate collocations reduce naturalness and precision.
Replace strained combinations such as “acute privacy” and “surfing other services” with conventional, context-appropriate phrasing.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A mix of simple and complex structures conveys the main ideas, but recurring errors with articles, agreement, sentence boundaries, and clause construction are noticeable.
Prioritise complete sentence structures and systematically check subject-verb agreement and article use during proofreading.
Write this task while it is fresh
Try the same task now. It helps you remember the feedback and write better next time.
IELTS Writing Task 2
In some countries, nowadays more and more people are choosing to live alone than in the past. Do you think this is a positive or a negative development?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.