Some cities create housing areas by providing taller buildings. Others create housing by building houses on a wider area of land. Which solution is better?
Sample Response
While the government in a number of cities decide to construct high-rise buildings to provide housing for their citizens, that in other cities expand their housing areas horizontally. In my opinion, building a vertical city is a better option because it makes better use of land, a limited resource on the planet, and it is also more eco-friendly than a horizontal one.
A vertical city can better optimize land useoptimize the land use because land on Earthearth will not grow any bigger, while the human population is ever-increasing. If tall apartments are erected and used as housingchosen as a place of residence, a unit of land can accommodate a larger number of residents. For instance, instead of allocating 100 square miles of land100 miles square of land for the construction of houses for only 100 householdsfor a population of only 100 households, the government can provide accommodation for ten times as many householdsten times as many by constructing a ten-story apartment buildingwhen constructing a ten-story apartment. Then, more land can be available for other purposes, such as cultivating crops to meet growing food demandthe growing food demands or expanding streets to alleviate traffic congestion, which can address critical issues associated with overpopulationthe overpopulation.
Meanwhile, horizontally expanded housing areashousing areas enlarged in a horizontal direction place great pressurea high pressure on the environment and people’s liveslife. As a result of the increasing human populationpopulation of humans, wildlands may be encroached uponwildlands may be encroached to make room for residential areas. For example, in Brazil, large areas of forest are cleareda major part of forests are cleared to build more houses for citizens, which not only endangers wildlife but also puts human civilization at higher risk of natural disasters. As forests shrinkWith narrowed forests, floods and droughts have taken place more often, damaging agriculture, the economythe agriculture, the economy and other important sectors of this country.
In conclusion, employing the same area of land, vertical cities can house more citizens than horizontal cities which are not only environmentally damaging but also unsustainable in the long run. Personally, municipal leaders should develop their citiescity verticallyin a vertical way as soon as possible.
Why this response received Band 7.5
The response is strongest in its clear position and well-developed comparison, with each body paragraph explaining a distinct advantage of vertical housing. The main limitation is language control: several grammatical faults and awkward collocations interrupt an otherwise persuasive argument. The highest-priority improvement is careful sentence-level editing, especially for clause structure, agreement, count expressions, and natural noun phrases.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response answers the choice directly and develops two relevant, well-supported reasons for preferring taller buildings.
Strengthen the comparison further by acknowledging a plausible advantage of low-rise expansion before showing why vertical development still prevails.
Coherence and Cohesion
The argument follows a clear progression from land efficiency to environmental impact, with effective paragraphing and reference across sentences.
Polish a few transitions and references so links such as 'Meanwhile' and the final relative clause express their relationships more precisely.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is varied and suitably topic-specific, though several combinations such as '100 miles square' and 'place a high pressure' are inaccurate.
Review noun patterns and common collocations, using forms such as '100 square miles' and 'place considerable pressure on' consistently.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The essay uses varied complex sentences successfully, but noticeable errors in clause construction, agreement, articles, and modifiers remain.
Rewrite the opening comparison as two complete parallel clauses and check every long sentence for clear subjects and correctly attached modifiers.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Some cities create housing areas by providing taller buildings. Others create housing by building houses on a wider area of land. Which solution is better?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.