IELTS Tourism Essay: A Band 6.5 Answer, and the Four Reasons It Is Not a 7

Tourism questions come back in Task 2 regularly, usually attached to developing economies, the environment, or local culture. Search the theme and you get two kinds of page: lists of questions, and model answers with a band written at the top and no explanation.

Neither tells you what to change in your own writing. So this page does something different. It takes one tourism answer that has actually been scored, estimated at band 6.5 overall, and shows which four things hold it at that level. Three of the four are habits you can fix this week, and none of them is a vocabulary list.

The question and the answer

Tourism has grown rapidly in many developing countries. Do the advantages of this growth outweigh the disadvantages for those countries?

This is an advantages and disadvantages question with a verdict in it. "Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages" asks for a judgement on the balance, not a list of each side. Our page on the advantages and disadvantages essay covers that question shape in general; what follows is one answer to it, in full, exactly as published in the library.

In the recent years, tourism have grown very fast in many developing countries who need money to improve their economy. Many people think this is a bad thing because of the environment, but other people believe it is good. In this essay, I will discuss both sides and show that the advantages of tourism are bigger than the disadvantages. Firstly, tourism brings a lot of money to developing countries. When tourists visit these countries, they spend money on hotels, food, and transport. This money can spent by the government to build schools and hospitals, which helps the local people. For example, in Thailand, tourism is a major industry and many local peoples depend of tourism for their daily life. Without tourism, these countries would find it very difficult to develope their infrastructure. Secondly, there are some disadvantages of this growth. One major problem is that tourists can damage the environment. They throw rubbish on beaches and consume a lot of water, which is very bad for local communities. Also, sometimes the culture of the developing countries is lost because local people try to copy the tourists. For instance, young people might stop wearing traditional clothes and start wearing western clothes instead. In conclusion, although tourism causes some problems like environmental damage and cultural changes, I think the benefits are more important. Tourism brings essential money to developing countries and creates many jobs. Therefore, the advantages of tourism outweigh the disadvantages because tourism is the best way for these countries to get money.

It is 252 words, it answers the question, and it is organised. The full page with the estimates and every highlighted span is in the library as the tourism answer.

What the four criteria came back as

Three sixes and a seven average to 6.25, which rounds to an overall estimate of 6.5. Those four numbers are estimates from a scoring engine, not marks from a qualified examiner, so read them as a reading of this answer rather than a prediction. What they are useful for is showing where the damage is concentrated, and in this answer it is concentrated in one place.

The advice this theme usually gets, and why it is wrong here

Almost every page about tourism essays offers topic vocabulary: ecotourism, cultural heritage, infrastructure, seasonal employment, carrying capacity. Learning those words is not harmful. It is just not what is holding this answer down.

Look at what the Lexical Resource comments actually said. The positive ones named "developing countries", "major industry", "infrastructure", and "environmental damage and cultural changes": all topic vocabulary, all working. The negative ones named "tourism have grown", "money can spent", "local peoples depend of tourism", and "develope". Every one of those is a grammar error sitting inside a word: subject and verb agreement, a missing auxiliary, a wrong plural with a wrong preposition, and a spelling slip.

The public band descriptors explain why that costs a band. For Lexical Resource, band 7 asks for "a sufficient range of vocabulary to allow some flexibility and precision" and for "less common lexical items with some awareness of style and collocation", with "occasional errors in word choice, spelling and/or word formation". Band 6 is "an adequate range of vocabulary for the task" with "some errors in spelling and/or word formation". Notice what is not in either bullet: any requirement for topic vocabulary. The criterion is about range, precision and accuracy in the words you use, whatever the subject is. Four word formation errors in 252 words is not occasional, which is the whole distance between 6 and 7 here.

So the contrarian reading of this answer is simple. It did not need more tourism words. It needed the words it already had to be correct.

Reason one: the position is announced, not stated

The third sentence is "In this essay, I will discuss both sides and show that the advantages of tourism are bigger than the disadvantages". The position is in there, but it arrives wrapped in a description of the essay, and "bigger than" is weaker than the "outweigh" the question itself uses. The thesis statement page works through what that sentence should look like for each question type, and rewrites this exact opening.

Reason two: the ideas stop at one example

Task Response came back at 7 with the comment that the ideas are "somewhat general and not fully extended". The band 7 descriptor says the writer "presents, extends and supports main ideas, but there may be a tendency to over-generalise". Band 8 wants that tendency gone.

You can see it in the Thailand sentence. "In Thailand, tourism is a major industry and many local peoples depend of tourism for their daily life" names a country and stops. Extending an idea means one more step of consequence, not one more example:

In Thailand, tourism accounts for a large share of national income, which means that a bad season for arrivals reaches households that never see a tourist: the farmer supplying hotel kitchens, the driver whose fares disappear, the market stall that depended on both.

That is the same idea, taken one step further into what it causes. Two sentences of that in each body paragraph is usually the difference the criterion is describing.

Reason three: the linking is mechanical and the referencing drifts

Coherence and Cohesion came back at 6, where the descriptor reads "uses cohesive devices effectively, but cohesion within and/or between sentences may be faulty or mechanical" and "may not always use referencing clearly or appropriately".

Both faults are visible. "Firstly" and "Secondly" open the two body paragraphs, which signals order and nothing else; a band 7 opening says what the paragraph is about. And "these countries" appears immediately after Thailand is named, so the reader cannot tell whether the sentence is about Thailand or about developing countries in general. That is exactly what unclear referencing means. The paragraph itself tells you the fix: name the group once, then use a pronoun that can only point one way.

Reason four: four grammar habits, each repeated

Grammatical Range and Accuracy came back at 6, which reads "makes some errors in grammar and punctuation but they rarely reduce communication". Band 7 wants "frequent error-free sentences". These four errors are all in the first body paragraph alone:

• Subject and verb agreement. "tourism have grown" should be "tourism has grown". Tourism is an uncountable noun and takes a singular verb.
• The passive auxiliary. "This money can spent by the government" should be "can be spent". A modal plus a past participle always needs "be" in the passive.
• People and peoples. "many local peoples" should be "many local people". People is already plural; peoples means distinct ethnic groups.
• The preposition after the verb. "depend of tourism" should be "depend on tourism".

All four belong to the same family: small, high frequency, and repeated. Our page on the grammar errors that cap an answer at band 6 lists the rest of that family.

The body paragraph, rewritten

Here is the first body paragraph again, with the four grammar fixes and one extension, and nothing else changed:

The clearest advantage is economic. Visitors spend money on hotels, food and local transport, and a share of that spending reaches the state as tax, which governments can then put into schools, clinics and roads. Tourism is a major industry in Thailand, for example, and many local people depend on it for their daily income, including those who never meet a tourist: suppliers, drivers and market traders. Without that revenue, countries at this stage of development would find it far harder to fund the infrastructure their own citizens use.

What changed, and which criterion each change answers:

• "tourism have grown", "can spent", "peoples", "depend of" are all corrected. That is Grammatical Range and Accuracy, and because three of the four were word formation errors it is also Lexical Resource.
• "Firstly" is gone, replaced by a sentence naming the paragraph's topic. Coherence and Cohesion, the clear central topic bullet.
• "these countries" became "countries at this stage of development", so the reference cannot be misread as Thailand alone. Coherence and Cohesion, the referencing bullet.
• The suppliers, drivers and traders clause adds a consequence rather than a second example. Task Response, the extension bullet.
• "a lot of money" became "a share of that spending reaches the state as tax". Lexical Resource, precision, with no unusual words added.

The paragraph is now 89 words against the original 73, which matters because a 252 word answer has very little room. Two body paragraphs at this density, with the introduction and conclusion the answer already has, land near 290 words, which is a comfortable length for Task 2.

How to prepare the tourism theme properly

The themes that recur with tourism are the economy, the environment, local culture and employment. Preparing them does not mean memorising a paragraph for each one, because a memorised paragraph answers the question you practised rather than the one on the paper.

Prepare two things instead.

1. One causal chain per theme. For the economy: visitor spending, then tax revenue, then public services, then who is affected when arrivals fall. For the environment: visitor numbers, then water and waste load, then the cost to residents. A chain gives you the extension that Task Response is asking for.
2. Your own error list. Write one tourism answer, find the three errors you repeat, and drill those. In the answer above, fixing four habits would have moved two criteria.

Then practise the verdict. Questions in this theme usually ask which side wins, so the answer has to commit. If the question asks whether advantages outweigh disadvantages and your conclusion says both sides matter, you have answered a different question, which our page on essays that go off topic covers in more detail.

Do this today

Take the question at the top of this page, set 40 minutes, and write your own answer. Then do the check that matters: read each sentence and ask whether it adds a consequence or just another name. For the grammar, read the answer once looking only at verbs, and once looking only at plurals.

When you want a second reading, paste it into Bandly and compare the four criterion estimates with the ones above. They are estimates from a scoring engine rather than marks from a qualified examiner, so the number is not the point; the spans it highlights are, because they tell you which sentence each estimate came from. More answers in this format, with the estimates on the page, are in the Task 2 samples.