Task 2: Public Transport and Cars

by Sui

The rising levels of congestion and air pollution found in most of the world cities can be attributed directly to the rapidly increasing number of private cars in use. In order to reverse this decline in the quality of life in cities, attempts must be made to encourage people to use their cars less and public transport more.

To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Nowadays, people use more private car, which leads to more cars on the road, heavy traffic jam and air pollution. These problems always happen especially in the cities. I agree with the way to solve this problem by encourage people to use public transportation instead of using private cars because it is the best and easy way that people can do.

Using public transportation saves a lot of money. Firstly, people do not have to buy their own cars. When it comes to prices, the fare for buses or taxis are cheaper than private cars when compared bus fare to the oil price. Accordingly, people do not have to spend lots of money on gas that they have to fill the tank. Also, they do not have to find a place for parking as well.

Moreover, using less private cars saves environment and people’s health as well. It causes less air pollution because carbon dioxide that released from cars is decreased. As all people know that carbon dioxide can harm people’s health, if less carbon dioxide release to the environment, people do not have to breathe polluted air inevitably. Furthermore, there will have no heavy traffic jam because people use more public transportation.

Even though it is a waste of time that people have to wait for a buses, taxis, subway or sky train, it will not take people a long time to reach their destination because public transportation nowadays are developed to be faster and more convenient for citizens.

Therefore, these are the reasons why I agree with the way to decrease congestion and air pollution by encourage people to use less private cars and turn to use more public transportation that government provided.

Words: 285

IELTS Sample Writing Analysis:

In order to answer this question, you will need to state your opinion, and then give the reasons why you have this opinion in your body paragraphs.

If you agree that less car use and more use of public transport will improve the quality of life in cities, then you will need to explain why this is the case.

In other words, you will need to discuss the benefits of using cars less and public transport more, specifically in relation to improvements in quality of life with regards to pollution and congestion.

If you disagree then you will need to discuss the disadvantages of this. Of course there is the option to partly agree and to look at some benefits and drawbacks.

Content

The candidate’s introduction in this IELTS sample writing is satisfactory as they introduce the topic in the first few sentences and give some background facts about it. They then clearly give their opinion in the final sentence.

However, their first body paragraph does not really answer the question. Although they correctly discuss the benefits of public transport, the benefits discussed do not relate to congestion or pollution.

Instead, the candidate writes about prices and costs. It is important to keep the essay on topic.

"Not having to find a place to park" is relevant, but this is only in the last sentence.

The second body paragraph is better. The candidate discusses how using cars less will improve people’s health, which is directly relevant to the prompt.

The third paragraph is relevant as the candidate suggests that the speed of public transport will improve people’s quality of life.

The conclusion then correctly summarizes the candidates point of view.

Organization

It is clear from the candidate's IELTS sample writing that they understand the basics of how to organize an essay, with an introduction that contains background information and a thesis, body paragraphs with different points and a conclusion.

However, these can be improved.

You should always try to have one central theme in each paragraph. The topic sentence in body paragraph one tells us that the paragraph is about how “public transportation saves a lot of money”, but then the candidate talks about “finding a place to park” in the last sentence. This does not fit with the topic of the paragraph.

Similarly, in the second body paragraph, it is not quite clear how the last sentence fits with the topic of the paragraph.

Check all ideas fit with the topic sentence (this is the purpose of planning your answer first), and avoid placing a new idea in one sentence at the end of the paragraph. All ideas should be fully explained and one sentence is not usually enough to do this.

Also, ensure all paragraphs are long enough. The third body paragraph is only one sentence. Three sentences are the minimum length for a paragraph.

Grammar and Vocabulary

The vocabulary in this student's IELTS sample writing is basically adequate to answer the question and the grammar errors do not cause too much difficulty when reading the essay.

The errors, though, are quite frequent and show that the candidate is proficient at writing but not at a high level.

For example:

I agree with the way to solve this problem by encourage people to use public transportation

This should be:

I agree that the way to solve this problem is by encouraging people to use public transportation

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