More and more people are migrating to cities in search of a better life, but city life can be extremely difficult. Explain some of the difficulties of living in a city. How can governments make urban life better for everyone?
Sample Response
Cities offer many conveniences and opportunities that are not present in rural areas, but they do not come without a cost. Higher living expenses, pollution, weak social tieslax relationships among people and intensefrantic competition often make city life difficultmake cities difficult to live in. The government must do much morehas a lot to do to improve the quality of life of city dwellerslifestyle of the city dwellers.
The high cost of livingThe overwhelming expense is the main problem for anyone who moves to a city from a small town or village. The cost of education, treatment, transportation, house rent, food and daily commodities are far higher in a city which makes life unbearable for the lower and lower-middle-class populace. Pollution in cities is another serious issuethe second most severe issue, and it makes metropolitan areas less suitable for children to grow up inchildren to grow in. For instance, people in big cities live in contaminated areas where Carbon dioxide emissions and the presence of other toxic elements in the air are higher.
Moreover, urbanmunicipal life is full of competition, and it makes people’s lives miserable. Someone has to compete to get in a public car, wait for his turn to meet the doctor, wait several hours in the traffic jam and fight hard to get a decent job. The competition is so intensehigh that even a child has to compete fiercelygo through a tough fight to be admitted to a schoolaccepted into a school.
I believe there are many steps that governmentssteps that a government can take to tackle these issues. Firstly, the government should control the prices of daily commodities and build more high-rise buildings to reduce rentsreduce house rent. More better-equipped public busespublic buses with better facilities should be introduced to reduce traffic jams. Decentralisation and the development of provincial townsdevelopment of the provincial towns would enable the authorities to relocate many industrieslet the authorities shift many industries to these regions and thus reduce pollution and pressurethe pollution and pressure on the cities and metropolitan areas.
In conclusion, the government should take initiatives to improve people's living standards in cities and make sure rural areas and towns have plenty of job opportunities to reduce the pressure on big cities.
Why this response received Band 7.0
The response covers both parts of the task with a clear structure, several relevant urban problems, and practical government measures. Its main limitation is uneven precision: some solutions are only briefly justified and several vocabulary choices sound unnatural. The highest-priority improvement is to explain how each proposed policy would solve a named problem while replacing strained collocations with more idiomatic language.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The essay addresses urban difficulties and government responses with relevant ideas, though some proposed solutions receive limited explanation.
Link each recommendation to a specific problem and explain its likely effect in greater depth.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response follows a clear problem-to-solution progression with appropriate paragraphing, although some internal development is list-like.
Group each problem with its explanation more tightly and use transitions that show causal relationships rather than simply adding points.
Lexical Resource
There is sufficient range for the topic, but awkward collocations such as "lax relationships," "public car," and "tough fight" reduce precision.
Prefer natural topic-specific expressions such as "weak social ties," "public transport," and "intense competition."
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The essay uses a good variety of complex sentences, with occasional agreement, article, and preposition errors that do not impede meaning.
Proofread long sentences for subject-verb agreement and article or preposition choices, especially in lists and relative clauses.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
More and more people are migrating to cities in search of a better life, but city life can be extremely difficult. Explain some of the difficulties of living in a city. How can governments make urban life better for everyone?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.