Today, the quality of life of people in big cities is getting worse. What are the causes of this problem? Any measures should be taken to solve it?
Sample Response
The characteristics of city life is often posited, closely related to ambient psychosocial stressors and physical environmentalenvironment hazards. As cities have clearly played a major role in the decline in city dwellers' quality of lifethe creation of the decreasing level of life quality of the city dwellers, they will form a central part of any response.
Big cities are associated with a high cost of living. Houses and apartments in prime neighbourhoods tend to be much smaller and much more expensive. Goods and services can also be more costly, in comparison with their rural counterpartscounterpart. The cost of living is barely offsetmediated by average salaries and public transportation, which will constantly put those dwellers under enormous disproportionate pressure and anxietypressure and anxiety at a disproportionately high rate. Another grave problem inof cities is the deterioration of the living environment. It cannot be denied that air, water and land are severely polluted in citiespolluted in a city. The main causes for this are lack of proper waste disposaldisposal of wastes, a large number of industrieslarge number of industries lacking purification facilities, lack of proper sanitation, use of coal, petrol and diesel which cause extreme pollution, incomplete combustion of fuels and other factorsand many more. Rising urban populationsAnd rising urban populations mean these problems may soon get a great deal worse.
Yet evidenceevidences suggests that measures can be taken to make cities work better in terms of emissions and sustainability and make them work better as prosperous and attractive places to live and work as well. For instance, an increaseFor instance，an increase in access to blue and green spacesblue space visibility and availability of green space to relax could help ease mental stress, shiftingmental stress，shifting people from moderate distress into a lower category. All cities can guide urban planning and prevent the expansion and lock in of high-carbon infrastructure or offer complementary measures on public transport, cycling, electric and shared vehicle infrastructure. A transformation in the energy supply mix, together with a step-change in technological energy efficiencyenergy efficiency of technologies and change in energy consumption is also worth considering.
In conclusion，it is undeniable that city life, per se, is placing the environment and individuals in peril. Fortunately, society is more aware and empowered to address these issues of urban health.
Why this response received Band 7.0
The response's strongest feature is its substantial coverage of both causes and possible remedies, supported by a clear causes-to-solutions structure and an ambitious range of vocabulary. Its main limitation is that several claims and proposed measures are expressed imprecisely or as lists rather than fully explained arguments; the highest priority is to develop fewer solutions through clearer cause-and-effect reasoning while tightening grammatical control and collocation.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response addresses both causes and measures with several relevant, generally developed ideas, though some solutions remain broad or list-like.
Explain how each major proposal would directly improve urban quality of life and support it with a specific outcome or example.
Coherence and Cohesion
Information progresses logically from causes to solutions, with clear paragraphing, although some long lists and loosely connected clauses reduce smoothness.
Organise each body paragraph around fewer central ideas and use explicit logical links between a problem, its mechanism, and its remedy.
Lexical Resource
A wide and topic-appropriate vocabulary is used flexibly, but several ambitious collocations are awkward or imprecise.
Prioritise natural combinations such as rising living costs, waste disposal, and low-carbon transport over unnecessarily abstract phrasing.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response uses varied complex structures successfully, but recurring agreement, article, countability, and clause-control errors remain noticeable.
Proofread complex sentences for subject-verb agreement, singular-plural consistency, and complete parallel structures before finalising the essay.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Today, the quality of life of people in big cities is getting worse. What are the causes of this problem? Any measures should be taken to solve it?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.