In many cities, an increasing number of people do not know their neighbours and the sense of community is lost. Discuss the causes and give measures to turn it around. Discuss both views and give your opinion?
Sample Response
The significant rises of the population, fast paced life, crime rate and dependency on technology in the urban areas make more people become unacquainted and unfriendly to their neighbours. However, there are measures that can be taken to alleviate this issue.
In today’s technology dependent era, people are mostly busy with their own work. Major streets in the cities are filled with busy people walking fast to reach their office or business place. They are even busy talking to their office colleagues and family members over the phone. After they return home late evening, they watch television, use computer and the Internet or spend time with family members. They scarcely have any time to socialise with neighbours. In some scenarios, people do not even know who live next door in city areas. These are the everyday scenarios in the cities where social interactions could be rarely seen as individuals have no time to socialise and much focused on their own work or personal interests.
Again, the rampant acceleration of crimes in the urban community makes individual become unnecessarily cautious and suspicious about other people, especially with the people they meet for the very first time. Even trusting their own neighbourhood would be tough for them as they are in constant fear of being harmed. As a result inhabitants of cities tend to become isolated as they are afraid to mingle because of undeveloped acquaintance. Unlike rural areas, where comparatively fewer people live together, city areas are highly populated and it is not unlikely that several thousands of people live in a block. Maintaining social relationship with all of them is this thus quite impossible.
On the other hand, considering possible measures to improve a sense of community in the neighbourhood community officials must organise programmes regularly to encourage camaraderie. Secondly, building more parks, social gathering places, community centres and children’s playground in the community could be a good measure to let people socialise and know each other. This is also helpful for meeting friends, bonding with family and neighbours. As a result, people living in the community would develop a sense of friendship. Positive news and events among community members should be highlighted in media to eradicate the fear people have about unknown people. Finally, organising different community groups to help people find others with same interest and to share common passions is a very effective measure to help people enhance their neighbouring bonds and relationship in my opinion.
To sum it up, city life and overwhelming population should not be hindrances to our sense of community and our relationship with our neighbours. It would be nicer for the community to develop a friendly environment to create a better place to live in with all the neighbours.
IELTS Writing Correction
- 1. Fix noun phrase Original: significant rises of the population Suggested revision: significant rise in population Why it matters: “Rise in population” is the correct singular collocation for this general trend.
- 2. Hyphenate compound adjective Original: fast paced life Suggested revision: fast-paced lifestyles Why it matters: The compound modifier needs a hyphen, and the plural agrees with the general reference to people.
- 3. Remove redundant verb Original: make more people become Suggested revision: make more people Why it matters: “Make” is followed directly by the object and adjective, so “become” is redundant.
- 4. Hyphenate compound modifier Original: technology dependent era Suggested revision: technology-dependent era Why it matters: A compound adjective before a noun should be hyphenated.
- 5. Use natural workplace phrase Original: their office or business place Suggested revision: their office or place of business Why it matters: “Place of business” is the idiomatic expression for the intended destination.
- 6. Add missing preposition Original: late evening Suggested revision: late in the evening Why it matters: The time expression requires “in the” before “evening”.
- 7. Add article Original: use computer Suggested revision: use a computer Why it matters: The singular countable noun “computer” requires an article.
- 8. Use natural transition Original: scenarios Suggested revision: cases Why it matters: “In some cases” is the idiomatic phrase for particular real-life situations.
- 9. Fix subject agreement Original: live Suggested revision: lives Why it matters: The relative pronoun refers to the singular person living next door.
- 10. Fix adverb placement Original: social interactions could be rarely seen Suggested revision: social interactions are rarely seen Why it matters: The frequency adverb belongs before the passive participle, and the statement does not need conditional “could”.
- 11. Add missing verb Original: and much focused Suggested revision: and are highly focused Why it matters: The coordinated predicate needs “are,” and “highly focused” is the natural degree phrase.
- 12. Use precise collocation Original: rampant acceleration of crimes Suggested revision: rapid increase in crime Why it matters: “Increase in crime” is the natural phrase for a rising crime level.
Suggested Rewrites
- significant rises of the population significant rise in population
- fast paced life fast-paced lifestyles
- make more people become make more people
- technology dependent era technology-dependent era
- their office or business place their office or place of business
- late evening late in the evening
Why this response received Band 7.0
The response thoroughly addresses the loss of neighbourhood ties through several developed causes and a substantial, practical set of community measures. Its progression is clear, but recurring awkward collocations and grammatical lapses make some otherwise sophisticated points sound imprecise or cumbersome. The highest-priority improvement is to retain the strong range of ideas while expressing them through more natural word combinations and more carefully controlled complex sentences.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Detailed feedback by IELTS writing criterion after the annotated essay.
Task Response
The causes and remedies are directly addressed, well extended, and supported by a clear viewpoint on rebuilding community ties.
Refine a few broad claims about city residents and crime with more qualified, specific explanation.
Coherence and Cohesion
Information is logically sequenced in purposeful paragraphs, although repetition and a few overloaded sentences weaken cohesion locally.
Tighten repeated explanations and divide densely packed solution sentences so that each measure and result is immediately clear.
Lexical Resource
A wide topic-specific vocabulary conveys nuanced ideas, but several ambitious collocations are unnatural or imprecise.
Check advanced phrases for natural usage, replacing combinations such as undeveloped acquaintance with simpler, more exact wording.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response shows a good range of sentence forms, but agreement, article, modifier, and clause-control errors occur across the essay.
Proofread complex sentences for complete clause structure and accurate agreement, especially when subjects and verbs are separated by long phrases.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
In many cities, an increasing number of people do not know their neighbours and the sense of community is lost. Discuss the causes and give measures to turn it around. Discuss both views and give your opinion?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.