Writing Task 2: Problem & Solution Essay: Question 3
Syllabus W.task2
In many towns, small independent shops on the local high street are closing down as more people choose to buy goods online or travel to large out-of-town retail centres.
What problems does this cause, and what measures could be taken to tackle them?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.
Show worked solution Hide worked solution
Worked solution
Examiner notes: why this is a band 9 response
Task Response
The introduction paraphrases the trend and outlines the problems-then-measures structure the prompt requires. Two distinct problems (lost community space and a self-reinforcing vacancy spiral) are each explained with a mechanism and grounded in a specific statistic, and both are answered directly by a corresponding measure in the second body paragraph, keeping the response tightly focused on the exact prompt rather than online retail in general.
Coherence & Cohesion
Topic sentences clearly flag each idea (“The most immediate problem is…”, “Closures also tend to accelerate one another”, “Two measures could help reverse this trend”), and “Ashworth Green” is referenced consistently across both body paragraphs, linking the evidence for the problem directly to the evidence that the proposed measure worked there.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is precise and varied: “shared community space”, “vacancy spiral” (implied through “compound itself”), “business-rate relief”, “flexible community spaces”. Near-synonyms avoid repetition (e.g. “closing”, “closures”, “decline” all referring to the same trend), and collocations are accurate (“footfall in the surviving shops”, “take root”).
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
The response shows confident control of complex structures: a colon introducing an explanation, a non-defining relative clause (“a function that a delivery van… simply cannot replace”), and a reduced relative clause (“a scheme that helped several new businesses take root…”). There are no errors of tense, agreement or word form anywhere in the response.
Common pitfalls specific to this task
See commonMistakes above: the most damaging is naming only the economic angle (lost jobs, lost trade) while ignoring the community and vacancy-spiral problems, which are exactly the dimensions a band 9 response on this prompt needs to develop with a specific, concrete measure attached to each one.