Writing Task 2: Discussion (Both Views) Essay: Question 4
Syllabus W.task2
Some people believe that the rapid growth of tourism in historic town centres brings vital economic benefits to the people who live there. Other people believe that this growth damages the character of these communities and lowers local residents' quality of life.
Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.
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Worked solution
Examiner notes: why this is a band 9 response
Task Response
The essay develops both the economic-benefit view (employment, investment, heritage restoration) and the quality-of-life view (loss of everyday shops, housing pressure) with fully comparable depth and specific support, then states an unambiguous, sustained opinion (“ultimately outweighed by the corrosive effect…”) in the introduction that is reinforced, not just repeated, in a conclusion that also proposes a practical qualification (regulation of scale).
Coherence & Cohesion
Topic sentences clearly attribute each paragraph’s argument to a viewpoint (“Those who champion tourism-led growth point to…”, “Critics counter that…”), and cohesive devices such as “this same influx” and “the sheer number of them” tie ideas back to earlier points without formulaic listing. The essay progresses logically from cause (tourism growth) to effect (economic gain or community loss) in both body paragraphs.
Lexical Resource
The response uses precise, sophisticated vocabulary appropriate to a higher-band answer: “corrosive effect”, “hollows out”, “disrepair”, “priced out of housing”. Topic-specific collocations are used accurately (“reinvest tourist revenue”, “short-term holiday lets”), and near-synonyms avoid repetition (e.g. “tourism-led growth”, “this same influx”, “the sheer number of them”).
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
A wide range of complex structures is used with full control: a non-defining relative clause (“A cousin of mine, who grew up in a coastal town…”), a participle-style reduced clause (“investors converting family homes into rental accommodation”), and a conditional-style final clause (“or the character… will inevitably be destroyed”). No errors of tense, agreement or word form are present.
Common pitfalls specific to this task
See commonMistakes above: the most damaging is developing the economic-benefit view in rich detail while reducing the quality-of-life view to a token phrase like “traffic and noise”. A band 9 discussion essay must give both views equally specific, developed support.