Ielts task 2: high petrol price can reduce traffic?

Would someone please help me score my essay on this ielts task2 sample question?

Increasing the price of petrol is the best way to solve growing traffic and pollution problems.
To what extent do you agree or disagree?
What other measures do you think might be effective?

solutions to the traffic problem

People spend a lot of time on travelling daily and the amount of time is increasing because the traffic is getting busier everyday. Busy traffic also creates pollution problems that endanger our lives. To overcome these problems, people suggest the government to increase the price of petrol and I agree with this viewpoint. In addition, increasing the license fee is another effective solution.

Raising the price of petrol can significantly reduces the numbers of vehicles travelling on the road and effectively control the growth of traffic because the cost of driving will be too high to afford by the general public. The cost of fuel plus other expenses including vehicle insurance and maintenance will reduce people's incentive to own a private car and switch to public transportation. For example, the travelling cost from downtown to the airport by car is around a hundred dollars whereas bus fare is just less than thirty dollars. As a result, the government can resolve traffic congestion easily by adjusting the petrol price level.

After the number of vehicles on the road has decreased, the air quality will improve that leads to better health condition of the citizens. This is because the combustion of petrol in vehicle engine emits a lot of harmful particles to the air and causes various kinds of respiratory diseases after being inhaled by human. For instance, statistics shows that the air pollution index in areas near major highway or city centers with busy traffic are on average three times than that of the countrysides.

In addition to the above measures, the government can double or triple the existing vehicle license fee and this act will discourage people to maintain their cars and travel by other means, thus reduce the amount of cars on the road further.

To conclude, the solutions to our traffic problem lies in the hand of our government. By increasing the petrol price and license fee, our world will become a better place to live.

@ruby1231 I believe that the overall score for your essay would be somewhere in the 5 range. This is a score that I based on problems with your task accuracy, your cohesiveness and cohesion, lexical resource, and grammar range. Your task accuracy had to be marked down because instead of presenting a properly paraphrased opening statement, you began to immediately discuss facts in the paragraph.

The discussion proper of the essay is not supposed to be presented until the 2nd-4th paragraphs. The opening statement is merely used to explain to the examiner what you understood of the original prompt topic and how it is ti be discussed. Under no circumstance are discussions to be done there because there are only 5 sentences allowed per paragraph and the opening statement will not allow for the proper discussion development along with a proper paraphrasing of the topic.

By the way, when you are asked to what extent you agree or disagree, you need to use that exact phrase in your paraphrasing. For example, you could have said; "I agree with that statement to a certain extent because of reasons to be discussed below." That would be a proper close to the opening statement paragraph. Always note the keywords in the original discussion and use these to help boost your score in the actual essay.

You also need to have at least 4 fully developed paragraphs in the essay. Your 4th paragraph is under utilized and under developed. This will result in a mark down of your score because you did not show a coherent and cohesive discussion throughout your essay. Needless to say, your conclusion also suffers from a proper representation of the previous discussion, summarized reasons, and repetition of your personal opinion.