Over population of urban areas has led to numerous problems. Identify one or two serious ones and suggest ways that governments and individuals can tackle these problems.
Sample Response
Overpopulation and its negative effectsnegative effects of it are major concerns in cities all around the globe. There are many negative outcomes that the growing number of the population contributes and I think traffic congestion and rapidly increasing crime rate are two major drastic effects of overpopulation. This essay examinesportrays the details of the two aforementioned issuesaforementioned two issues and suggests relevant solutions.
Undeniably, choking traffic makes city lifethe city life difficult. Industries, schools and hospitals are concentrated in urban areasare rooted in the city areas. Every day, commutersEveryday commuters spend hours on endhours after hours at traffic lightsin the traffic signals. For instance, professionals or school going children need to spend their precious time on the road because of traffic bottlenecksbottleneck traffic. Firstly, this problem can be tackled effectivelytalked significantly by constructing new flyovers and roads and encouragingconstructing new flyovers, roads and by encouraging the use of public transportation. Secondly, educatingSecondly educating the public about car-pooling or promoting public transportation would be another great step to address the congestion.
In addition, the crime rate is risingincreased rapidly in urban areas. This is triggered by increasing unemployment and poverty. The government can control poverty by providing financial aid to the deprived community. Creating more job opportunities is another good and long term solution. Furthermore, the government should impose severe penaltiesimplement severe punishment for any sort of crime so that people think twice before committing any kind of crime. By these measures and by educating people, crime rate can be controlled to a great extent.
TakingPutting everything into consideration, even though cities are well developed, crime rate and traffic issues reduce the quality of urban lifedeteriorate the city living and these two problems occur mostly because of the increasing population in city areas. Decentralisation and development of rural areas could keep a balance between population levels in rural and urban areasthe numbers of population in rural and city areas and effective measures could be taken by governmentsgovernment and citizens to address the negative effects which are caused by overpopulationcaused due to the over population in urban areas.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response clearly identifies two serious urban problems and offers several relevant remedies, with logical paragraphing and sustained focus throughout. Its main weakness is that solutions are weighted toward government action while individual responsibility is only briefly addressed, and frequent awkward collocations reduce precision. The highest-priority improvement is to develop specific individual actions for both problems while using more natural verb-noun combinations.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
Both problems are clearly identified and supported with relevant solutions, though individual action receives limited development.
Explain concrete steps individuals can take to reduce both congestion and crime, alongside the government measures.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response is logically organised into clear problem-and-solution paragraphs, and progression is easy to follow.
Avoid repeating closely related solutions and make each paragraph's internal sequence more economical.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is sufficient for the topic, but frequent unnatural collocations and imprecise expressions weaken control.
Replace phrases such as hours after hours in the traffic signals and numbers of population with natural academic combinations.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response uses both simple and complex sentences, but article, agreement, preposition, and clause-control errors remain noticeable.
Edit systematically for articles and prepositions, and simplify long concluding sentences to improve grammatical accuracy.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Over population of urban areas has led to numerous problems. Identify one or two serious ones and suggest ways that governments and individuals can tackle these problems.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.