Some people prefer to live in a house, while others feel that there are more advantages to living in an apartment. Are there more advantages than disadvantages of living in a house compared with living in an apartment?
Sample Response
Everybody dreams of havingEverybody dreams to have a comfortable and beautiful place to live in with their family that they would like to call "home". In fact, a suitable home is an important needhome is not just a dream, it is our fundamental right. But when it comes to choosing what type of place to live in, many people like to live in a house while others prefer an apartment. In my opinion, there are both advantages and disadvantages to living in a house or apartment, and the choice depends on our preference and capacity. A house is a large accommodation facility that comes with many large rooms, a gardenmany large rooms, garden, access to the rooftop, open space and so on. The owner can go up vertically to have more rooms or can plant trees whenever he wants. That is the kind of freedomThat's the kinds of freedom that make houses more desirable to most people. There is no restriction on how a landlord can design or paint the house or how large he wants the lawn to be. Finally, the price of land increases every year and investment in a house is profitable. However, these freedoms do not come cheap. The soaring real estate pricesreal state price makes it impossible for most people to even think of owning a house in a city. Furthermore, the maintenance of a large house requires employees and money and the owner has to ensure the safety of the house on his own. On the other hand, an apartment is a relatively modern housing optionaccommodation arrangement for small families and isare built by real estatestate developers keeping modern facilities in mind. The customers can get everything ready-madereadymade, sometimes even fully furnished rooms and kitchenskitchen. This eliminates the hassle of building a house and decorating it. The security and utility servicesfacilities are maintained by the building authority. However, an apartment owner has many restrictions, especially about how to renovate it, paint it, extendextent living areas or make more rooms. Besides, most flats have depreciation and are not always a good investmentnot always a good investment. In conclusion, choosing thea perfect place to live is not just aboutis in not just about advantages or drawbacks. Preference, modern amenities, return on investment and financial capacityeconomic power are also related.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The essay presents a useful range of relevant points about ownership, cost, freedom, maintenance and convenience, and its final view recognises that circumstances affect housing choices. The main limitation is that it never clearly decides whether houses have more advantages than disadvantages, while the single-paragraph structure and recurring language errors weaken clarity; prioritise an explicit comparative judgement supported by separate, focused paragraphs for each side.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The essay discusses advantages and disadvantages of houses and apartments and gives a clear final view that the choice depends on circumstances. However, it does not fully answer whether houses have more advantages than disadvantages compared with apartments.
State a clearer comparative judgement: for example, houses offer more freedom and investment value, but apartments may be better overall for urban families because of cost and convenience.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas are logically sequenced, but the response is one long paragraph, so the contrast between houses and apartments is not visually or structurally clear. Some transitions are implicit rather than explicit.
Use separate paragraphs for house advantages, house disadvantages, apartment advantages and final comparison.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is varied and generally clear, with relevant terms about accommodation, ownership and investment. Some spelling and collocation errors affect precision, such as "real state", "readymade" and "extent living areas".
Review housing collocations: "real estate", "extend living areas", "property value", "maintenance costs" and "shared facilities".
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Grammar is generally understandable but contains frequent article, agreement and word-form errors. Long sentences sometimes become awkward, especially in the apartment comparison.
Break the one long paragraph into shorter controlled sentences and check plural count nouns such as rooms, facilities, restrictions and drawbacks.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Some people prefer to live in a house, while others feel that there are more advantages to living in an apartment. Are there more advantages than disadvantages of living in a house compared with living in an apartment?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.