Writing Task 2: Problem & Solution Essay: Question 5
Syllabus W.task2
Beekeepers and farmers in many regions have reported a marked decline in populations of bees and other pollinating insects over the past two decades.
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.
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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 (falling crop yields and wider biodiversity loss) are each explained with a mechanism and grounded in a specific study, and both are answered directly by a matching measure in the second body paragraph, so the response develops the full two-part question rather than a single generic “protect the bees” argument.
Coherence & Cohesion
Topic sentences clearly announce each idea (“The most direct problem is…”, “A second, less visible problem is…”, “Two measures could help address this decline”), and “Calderwick” and “Dr Renner” are referenced consistently across the problems and measures paragraphs, linking the evidence for the problem directly to the evidence that the proposed measure works.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is precise and topic-appropriate: “monoculture fields”, “hedgerow”, “knock-on loss”, “habitat restoration”. Near-synonyms avoid repetition (e.g. “decline”, “falling… yields”, “reduced pollinator visits” all referring to the same underlying trend), and collocations are accurate (“set fruit” is implied through context, “phased out locally”, “measurably improve”).
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
The response shows confident control of complex structures: a semicolon joining two closely related clauses, a non-defining relative clause (“a difference attributed directly to reduced pollinator visits” functioning as an appositive), and a reduced relative clause (“restoring the kind of habitat that Calderwick’s own comparison suggested…”). 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 collapsing this into a generic conservation essay, when a band 9 response on this exact prompt needs to name the specific agricultural (crop yield) and ecological (wild plant diversity) problems separately and pair each with its own realistic measure.