The roads in major cities today are often difficult to travel on. What are the causes of this? What are some possible solutions?
Sample Response
As the world’s populationworld populations transition from rural to urban settings, there has been a resulting declineresultant degradation of travel conditions within cities. The main causes of this are all related to overpopulation and the solution is for governments to incentivise people to liveincentivise living outside city limits.
The clearest source of crowded roads and deterioratingdegrading infrastructure is surging urban populations. Research now shows thatResearch has shown that now more than half of the world’s populationmore than half the world is densely packed into cities built hundreds of years ago. Take Boston as an example. Boston was built for a population of under 100,000 people, who mainly travelled on foot, on horseback, or by carriageby walking or riding horses and carriages. Today the population is nearly a million, which meanspopulation is nearly a million and that means the narrow roads are gridlocked with traffic during rush hour. The intensive use of roads in an overpopulated cityrelentless pounding of an overpopulated city also means that the roads suffer from greater wear and tear, which necessitates constant maintenance and exacerbates the average citizen’s daily commute.
In order to mitigate these issues, governments could encourage people to move outside cities. One partialhalf measure would be to lower taxes in neighboring districts. Many people could still commute to work from nearby suburbs, as is the case in most major cities already. Governments could also give special tax breaks and incentivesdispensations to companies that allow workers to work remotely. This would enable people to livefree people up to live outside of cities or, if they opt to remain in the city, they at least would not contribute to rush hour traffic.
In conclusion, worsening travel conditions for urban dwellers can be curbed through government intervention. The nations that take up this cause will be well placed to compete in a rapidly evolving 21st century.
Why this response received Band 8.0
The response answers both parts directly and develops a clear cause-and-solution argument with a concrete city example and practical policy measures. Its main limitation is that the analysis largely reduces the causes to urban population growth, leaving other relevant pressures unexplored and making the treatment slightly narrow. The highest-priority improvement is to distinguish multiple contributing causes and connect each proposed measure more explicitly to the problem it addresses.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
Both questions are fully addressed with a clear central argument, relevant explanation, and specific supporting examples.
Broaden the causal analysis by separating population pressure from factors such as planning, transport provision, or private-car dependence.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas are sequenced clearly, paragraphs have distinct purposes, and cohesive devices guide the reader without becoming mechanical.
Make the links between each solution and each identified road problem even more explicit to sharpen the argument's internal logic.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is wide, precise, and appropriately formal, with effective expressions for infrastructure, congestion, and government policy.
Refine the few slightly exaggerated or less natural choices, such as relentless pounding, to maintain consistently exact wording.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A wide variety of sentence forms is used accurately, and the great majority of sentences are error-free.
Maintain this control while tightening occasional long sentences so that their logical relationships remain immediately transparent.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
The roads in major cities today are often difficult to travel on. What are the causes of this? What are some possible solutions?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.