To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement? The best way to solve the world’s environmental problem is to increase the price of fuel.
Sample Response
The environment is facing many problems, and most of them are largely caused by human activitycreated largely by human actions. To protect the environment, some people suggest raising fuel prices as the most effective solutionincreasing the fuel price as the most effective solution because they believe thatas they think that fuel price would reduce private car ownership and curbcheck uncontrolled industrialisation. In this essay, I will disagree with this opinion by arguingdiscussing that global environmental problems are multifaceted and increasing the fuel price is not the best possible solution.
To begin with, increasing the price of fuel would not deter rich and upper-middle-class people from drivingdeter the rich and upper-middle class to drive their own cars but would increase the pricebut increase the price of essential goodsnecessary commodities making life for the poor and lower-middle class even more difficult. It is evident that people who earn a large sum of money, do not care even a hundred per cent fuel price increase decision as they can afford that without denting their pockets. But a mere 20% fuel price increase would make life difficult for manymass people as the price of everyday goodsdaily items and essential services would increase proportionately. Similarly, when industries have to purchase fuel at an elevated price, they inflate the price of their products, thus profitingtheir products thus profiting even more. Therefore, a high fuel price is not a viable solution to address environmental issues.
Moreover, fossil fuel is not the only culpritonly fossil fuel is not the culprit for environmental degradation and it is a multifaceted issue. LoggingLogging of woods, uncontrolled urbanisation, chemical wastewastage, water and noise pollution and our comfortable lifestyles and consumer habitsour cosy lifestyle and consumerism habits are all responsible for environmental concerns. And all these issues need proper policy implementation rather than hiking the price of fuel. For instance, to reduce deforestation, water and noise pollution, we need proper policy and their implementation not a hike in fuel prices.
Therefore, increasing the fuel price may be a way to control environmental problems to a limited extent, but it could never be the best solution. We need to include many integrated policies and diverse methods to save our environment.
Why this response received Band 7.5
The response directly rejects the proposed solution and supports its position through two well-developed arguments concerning unequal economic effects and the multifaceted causes of environmental damage. Progression is clear and the language has good range, though several awkward collocations and grammatical slips reduce precision. Refining sentence-level accuracy and using more natural phrasing would make an already persuasive argument consistently polished.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
A clear position is fully maintained and developed with relevant, specific reasoning about economic consequences and the need for wider policy measures.
Strengthen the second argument with one concrete example of an integrated policy and explain its environmental effect in more detail.
Coherence and Cohesion
The essay is logically sequenced with focused paragraphs and clear progression, although some transitions and repeated references to fuel prices feel slightly mechanical.
Use more varied referencing and integrate examples smoothly so that connections emerge from the reasoning rather than explicit linkers alone.
Lexical Resource
A good range of topic vocabulary conveys precise arguments, with occasional unnatural collocations such as expressions about mass people or logging woods.
Replace the few non-idiomatic combinations with natural academic phrasing while retaining the effective range and specificity.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A wide variety of complex sentences is used with generally good control, though occasional errors in complementation, agreement, punctuation, and reference remain.
Proofread long sentences for verb patterns, subject-verb agreement, pronoun reference, and unnecessary commas to achieve more consistent accuracy.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement? The best way to solve the world’s environmental problem is to increase the price of fuel.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.