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IELTS Writing Samples

IELTS essay samples (writing task 2), report and letter samples (writing task 1) with Band Scores, marked by IELTS teachers, including comments and suggestions on how to increase your score

IELTS essay, topic: In many countries young people start living on their own after high school, is this a positive or negative development?

In many countries around the world young people decide to leave their parents’ home once they finish school. They start living on their own or sharing a house with friends. Is this a positive or a negative development? Give reasons for your answer and include relevant examples.

Sample Essay

Nowadays it is becoming increasingly common for youngsters to start their independent life by moving out of their parents’ home after graduation from school. This trend has positive effects on the society and the reasons behind it will be discussed next in this essay.

There are various benefits for both young people and their parents when individuals start living independently after finishing school. Young adults, in this way, have to take care of their daily needs, from house chores, cooking or cleaning to financial independence. Thus, instead of wasting time on childish activities, they are motivated to learn skills and work part-time or full-time in order to cover their living expenses. Although it might seem challenging for them to live on their own at first, it would give them valuable experience, helping them to become mature, responsible adults. Parents would also be pleased with this practice since they can enjoy their own lives by having more time for themselves. Not only would they have more financial flexibility due to independence of their children, but they also don’t have to change their habits in order to adapt to the new generation’s lifestyle. For instance, it allows many people to travel around the world, which would be impossible if their children were to stay with them after finishing high school.

Admittedly, there might be some challenges involved in this way of life. In some cases and especially under the influence of new friends or housemates, youngsters might choose to get involved in dangerous activities that involve drugs or petty crimes. However, instead of keeping their children close through adulthood, parents should prepare in advance and raise their children to distinguish between right and wrong and teach them to take responsibility for their actions.

In conclusion, although there might be some adverse consequences to this relatively new practice, I believe that the advantages of young people leaving family home outweigh its drawbacks, for both children and parents.

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IELTS Band 9 essay, topic: Today’s governments struggle to create enough housing for increasing populations while protecting the environment (opinion)

This is a model response to a Writing Task 2 topic from High Scorer’s Choice IELTS Practice Tests book series (reprinted with permission). This answer is likely to score IELTS Band 9.

Set 2 Academic book, Practice Test 7

Writing Task 2

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

One of the major problems that faces today’s governments is creating enough satisfactory housing for their increasing populations whilst still trying to protect the environment.

How can this be achieved? Discuss and give your opinion.

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your knowledge or experience.

You should write at least 250 words.

Answer

In a world with an ever-growing population, providing housing is one of the crucial tasks of all governments. At the same time, however, the environment has to be protected from too much destruction and deforestation. Different solutions have been created to solve these problems. One significant solution could be increasing the height of buildings.

When looking at the skyline of metropolitan cities, skyscrapers are becoming increasingly visible. The reason for this is simple: housing has to be provided, while the environment should suffer the least amount possible. Decreasing the building footprints of houses and therefore the destruction of environment, while increasing the height, is an effective solution in overcoming this dilemma. This resolution also has its faults though, as increasing height also means that sunlight reaching the streets will decrease and that housing will be built more densely in order to save space.

Another possible solution is to increase building costs to pressure the population into living in smaller areas, which would save space. As this impacts members of the community unevenly depending on their wealth, this would encourage unequal living standards and conflicts as a result of this. Therefore, this is not a plausible solution to the problem.

In my opinion, finding the perfect way to minimise environmental damage while increasing housing is a problem to which there is no simple solution. Many governments are currently relying on height to solve the problem, but this is not attractive to many people. Any solution chosen should be one that causes the fewest problems.

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