Is it better to grow up in a city or in the countryside?
An IELTS Writing Task 2 discussion essay on whether children are better off growing up in a city or in the countryside, with a band 9 model answer, a plan, and notes on each marking criterion.
Write your answer
Do this before you scroll. The model answer below will make sense as a comparison and not much use as a template.
Task 2 · 40 minutes · at least 250 words
Some people think that children are better off growing up in a large city, while others believe that the countryside is a healthier place for a childhood. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.
Spell check is turned off deliberately, because it is off in the real test. Your essay stays in this browser and is never uploaded.
How to plan this one
- 1Discussion plus opinion. The instruction has two parts and both are marked: each view argued fairly, then your own, which can side with one or sit between them if you say exactly where.
- 2Give the view you do not hold a real argument, not a sentence. Examiners read a dismissed opposing view as a failure to discuss.
- 3State your opinion in the introduction as well as the conclusion. Withholding it until the end is not suspense; it reads as no position for three paragraphs.
- 4Choose examples a Pakistani reader would recognise and an examiner would understand: schools and hospitals in cities, space and family in villages.
Model answer
Written at the top of the band. Read it for the moves it makes, not the opinions it holds: a memorised essay on this topic will not fit the prompt you actually get.
Where a child grows up shapes almost everything about the adult they become, so it is unsurprising that parents argue about it. Those who favour cities point to opportunity; those who favour the countryside point to health and freedom. In my view the city's advantages are the ones that compound over a lifetime, though the countryside offers something cities have largely lost.
The case for the city rests on access. A child in Lahore or Karachi can reach good schools, specialist doctors, libraries, sports clubs and, later, universities and employers, without leaving home. Exposure matters as much as access: growing up among people of different backgrounds, languages and occupations teaches a flexibility that a homogeneous village cannot, and the child arrives at adulthood already familiar with the world they will have to work in. These advantages are cumulative. Each year of better schooling makes the next year's opportunities wider.
The case for the countryside is about the quality of the childhood itself rather than the adulthood it leads to. Rural children have space, clean air, physical work and unsupervised time, and they typically grow up inside an extended family rather than a nuclear one. Many of the things urban parents now pay for, from sports coaching to outdoor camps, are simply the ordinary condition of a village childhood. There is a reasonable argument that children raised this way are healthier, more resilient and more secure.
Both views describe real goods, but they are not equal. The freedoms of a rural childhood are valuable for the years they last, whereas the access a city provides changes the trajectory of a whole life, and a family can supply some of the countryside's benefits in a city far more easily than it can supply a city's institutions in a village.
That asymmetry is why, on balance, I side with the city, while recognising that what it offers comes at the cost of a kind of childhood that is becoming rare.
Why it scores, criterion by criterion
Task Response
Both views are given a full paragraph with developed, specific arguments, and neither is set up to fail. The writer's opinion appears in the introduction, is tested against both views in the fourth paragraph, and is restated in the conclusion with the reason. This is the full shape the instruction asks for.
Coherence and Cohesion
Parallel openings ("The case for the city rests on", "The case for the countryside is about") signal the structure without numbered connectives. The fourth paragraph does the weighing explicitly and the word "asymmetry" in the conclusion refers back to it. Reference ("these advantages", "this way", "that asymmetry") does the linking.
Lexical Resource
Exact vocabulary for the argument: "compound", "cumulative", "homogeneous", "trajectory", "asymmetry", "resilient". Paraphrase of the prompt throughout ("where a child grows up", "a rural childhood", "the access a city provides"). Collocations are natural: "rests on access", "changes the trajectory", "comes at the cost of".
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Complex sentences with embedded contrasts ("whereas", "while recognising that"), a balanced comparative in paragraph four, and controlled use of the colon and semicolon. Error-free throughout, with sentence length varied deliberately: the short "These advantages are cumulative" punctuates a long paragraph.
Language worth stealing
Each of these carries a trap as well as a use, so the note matters as much as the phrase.
- Those who favour X point to A; those who favour Y point to B
- Sets up both views in one balanced sentence in the introduction. The semicolon is what makes it one sentence; do not replace it with a comma.
- The case for X rests on ...
- Opens a paragraph arguing one view without saying "firstly". Vary the second with "The case for Y is about ...".
- Both views describe real goods, but they are not equal
- Begins the weighing paragraph. It concedes both sides genuinely before the essay chooses, which is what "discuss both views" rewards.
- on balance, I side with X, while recognising that ...
- A conclusion that states a side and keeps the concession. "Side with" is more precise than "prefer" here.
More Task 2 practice
Last updated 18 September 2026.