Should a city try to preserve its old, historic buildings or destroy them and replace them with modern buildings? What is your viewpoint on this issue? Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.
Sample Response
Modernization has resulted in the rapid expansion of cities, which has left its heritage and culture behind. Day by day, newDay by day new commercial complexes and other buildings are coming up in place of older buildingsin the place of older buildings. Sometimes historically significant buildings have been demolished to build new structures. This has sparked an interesting debatestirred into an interesting debate on whether the historic buildings should fall prey to modernizationbecome the prey of modernization or not.
Firstly, conserving historical buildingsbuilding is a means of transferring the ancestral legacy to future generations. These are a valuable resourceThese are a great means for our children to learn about our culture and heritage; such monuments alsoheritage, also such monuments often give insight into our ancestors' lifestylesour ancestor's lifestyle. Knowing our history and respecting itgiving respect to it is very importantvery much important to promoteadvocate patriotism in young people.
Secondly, such buildings will attract more tourists; hence, the tourism industrytourists, hence, the tourism industry will grow. This brings in more money and thus improvesThis brings more money, thus improves the lives of local peoplepeople over there. This money could be used to preserve and renovate such buildings. Additionally, a city becomes well known in other placeswell known among other parts and this increases the chances of gettingincreases chances of getting more funds and investments.
Finally, increased tourism means increased income. To cater to the increasing number of tourists, new hotelsnumber of tourists’ new hotels, resorts and better facilities have to be built. Apart from bringing more money, it increases employment opportunities too.
In my opinion, preserving such buildings would greatly benefit the economy and also teachteaches future generations about their history, culture and traditions. Furthermore, it significantly contributes to infrastructure developments and modernization, while also helping to preserveat the same time allows saving cultural beauty.
Delete(by- Santosh)
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response is strongest in its clear support for preservation and its logical presentation of cultural, tourism, and employment benefits. Its main limitation is that the tourism and income points overlap, no genuinely specific example is provided, and several grammatical and collocational errors weaken precision. The highest-priority improvement is to replace the repeated economic point with a concrete example of a preserved building and explain how it benefits both heritage and the city.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response presents a clear viewpoint and several relevant reasons, but support remains general and the requested specific examples are absent.
Include a concrete historic building or city example and explain exactly how preservation produced cultural or economic benefits.
Coherence and Cohesion
The essay progresses logically through distinct reasons, although the two tourism paragraphs overlap and some sentence-level linking is awkward.
Combine the related tourism and employment points into one developed paragraph and use the remaining space for a distinct supporting reason.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary shows some flexibility and appropriate topic range, but several unnatural collocations and imprecise expressions reduce control.
Replace phrases such as “stirred into a debate” and “prey of modernization” with more natural, precise academic wording.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A range of sentence structures is attempted, but errors in agreement, punctuation, articles, and clause construction recur throughout.
Check subject-verb agreement and sentence boundaries, especially when joining explanations with words such as “hence” and “thus.”
Write this task while it is fresh
Try the same task now. It helps you remember the feedback and write better next time.
IELTS Writing Task 2
Should a city try to preserve its old, historic buildings or destroy them and replace them with modern buildings? What is your viewpoint on this issue? Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.