Problem and Solution: Essays That Fix Things

B2 · Writing Lab · about 35 minutes

Learn→See an Example→Analyze→Practice→Write→Check→Improve→Rewrite

🎯 Objective. Write a problem-solution essay: prove the problem is real and costly, present two solutions with honest feasibility checks, and recommend the strongest with an implementation first step.

1 · Learn

The problem-solution essay fails in two classic ways: a problem described so vaguely that nothing can fix it (“pollution is bad”), and solutions listed like wishes (“the government should do something”). The professional standard: the problem gets NUMBERS and victims; each solution gets a mechanism, a cost, and a weakness; the conclusion recommends one and names its first step.

Structure: Introduction (the problem, priced) → Causes/effects if needed → Solution 1 (+ feasibility) → Solution 2 (+ feasibility) → Recommendation. Solutions must match the causes you diagnosed — a solution to a different problem is decoration.

2 · See an Example

The City Is Drowning in Its Own Cars

Downtown Austin now spends more of its life in traffic than in motion: the average commuter loses over eighty hours a year to congestion — two full work weeks, burned sitting still. The problem is not the number of cars alone; it is that our streets give the least efficient vehicle the most space. A single bus lane moves more people than three car lanes, yet we keep allocating the road to the minority technology.

The first solution is reallocation: convert the center's main car lanes into bus-and-bike lanes within one budget year. The mechanism is simple arithmetic — move people, not vehicles — and cities from Paris to Bogotá have shown the pattern works. Its weakness is political, not technical: drivers experience the change as loss before they experience it as speed.

The second solution is pricing: a modest congestion charge for entering the center at peak hours, with the revenue visibly fenced for buses. London's charge cut center traffic by roughly a third in its first years and funded the very alternatives drivers needed. Its weakness is fairness — the charge must exempt or discount the workers who have no alternative hour or route.

Of the two, pricing should come first: it funds the buses that make lane reallocation painless. The first step costs nothing and takes a week — publish the eighty hours on every city billboard, and let the problem introduce itself.

3 · Analyze the Example

Problem priced, not described. Eighty hours = two work weeks: the problem arrives with a number and a human translation. Vague problems get vague essays.
Causes match solutions. Diagnosis: space allocated to the least efficient vehicle. Both solutions treat exactly that cause — no decoration.
Feasibility + weakness per solution. Each solution carries its mechanism (arithmetic; funding), its evidence (Paris, London), AND its named weakness. Solutions without weaknesses are advertisements.
Sequenced recommendation + zero-cost first step. Not “do both” but an ORDER with a reason (pricing funds reallocation) and a first step a mayor could take Monday.

Useful Vocabulary

congestion — overcrowding that slows movement (traffic)

Congestion wastes millions of hours.

reallocation — giving a resource to a different use

Lane reallocation moved thousands more people.

feasibility — how possible something is to do in practice

Check the feasibility before recommending.

exempt — to free someone from a rule or charge

Night workers are exempt from the charge.

fenced (revenue) — reserved for one named purpose

The income is fenced for buses.

Useful Expressions

The average … loses … a year to …
The problem is not … alone; it is that …
The mechanism is simple: …
Its weakness is …, not …
The first step costs nothing: …

Common Mistakes

✗ “Traffic is a very big problem in many cities nowadays and the government should solve it as soon as possible.”

✓ “The average commuter loses eighty hours a year to congestion — two work weeks burned sitting still.”

The first sentence could be pasted into any essay about anything. Price YOUR problem in YOUR city with YOUR number.

✗ “Solutions: people should use buses more, and cars should be banned, and everyone should be more responsible.”

✓ Each solution needs a mechanism, an owner, and a weakness: who acts, how it works, what it costs, where it fails.

Imperatives to nobody (“people should…”, “the government should…”) are wishes. A solution names its machinery.

✗ Diagnosing “the problem is too many cars” and proposing “more parking” as the solution.

✓ Solutions must answer the diagnosed cause: too many cars → move people per lane, price the peak, or cut the need to travel.

More parking treats the symptom and feeds the cause. Trace every solution back to a cause you named.

4 · Guided Practice

Price this problem: “Students are distracted by phones in class.” Give it a number and a victim.
See a model answer
Example: “In a 45-minute lesson, the average student's phone lights up eleven times; the victim is the bottom third of the class, whose attention never returns once it leaves.”
Add the weakness to this solution: “Ban phones in school — problem solved.”
See a model answer
Example weakness: “Enforcement becomes a daily police action, and emergencies lose their fastest channel; the ban needs a storage system and an exceptions rule.”
Choose the better recommendation and say why: (a) “Both solutions are good and should be done.” (b) “Start with the charge, because it pays for the buses that make the lanes painless.”
See a model answer
(b) — it sequences the solutions with a causal reason instead of listing them.

5 · Write — Your Task

✍️ Write a problem-solution essay about a problem you can price (traffic, food waste, student distraction, loneliness among the elderly, plastic in your town): price the problem with a number and a victim, diagnose the cause, develop two solutions (mechanism + evidence + weakness each), and recommend a sequence with a first step.

Goal: 4–5 paragraphs · Length: 300–350 words

No number, no problem: find the statistic or count it yourself for a week.
Every solution must name WHO acts and WHAT it costs.
End with an order of operations and a first step that is embarrassingly small.

✍️ Writing Studio0 words

Sentences: 0Tap an expression to insert it:

The average … loses … a year to …The problem is not … alone; it is that …The mechanism is simple: …Its weakness is …, not …The first step costs nothing: …

6 · Check — Self-Check

Work through your checklist honestly, then run the Self-Check. It counts words and sentences and spots mechanical points — it does not grade your English. You are the editor.

My problem has a number and a human cost. The diagnosed cause is stated in one sentence. Both solutions answer that exact cause. Each solution has mechanism, evidence, and a named weakness. The recommendation sequences them with a reason. A concrete first step closes the essay.

Read a model answer for the task

A third of the food bought by an average household is thrown away — in money, about $1,500 a year per family, rotted. The problem is not carelessness; it is choreography. Supermarkets sell in packages sized for their shelves, not our meals, and date labels whisper “throw it away” days before food actually turns.

The first solution is labeling reform: replace the single confusing date with two honest ones — “best quality until” and “unsafe after”. Britain's experiments with removing dates from produce cut waste measurably, because shoppers trusted their noses again. The weakness: industry resisting relabeling costs, which are real but one-time.

The second solution is at the household scale: the weekly fifteen-minute fridge audit, taught in schools like fire drills. Families who plan from what they OWN before shopping lists consistently report the fastest savings. Its weakness is that it asks for a habit, and habits are slower than laws.

Sequence them: labels first, because they retrain every shopper at once; habits second, riding on the new clarity. The first step belongs to one supermarket chain brave enough to print two dates and advertise it.

7 · Improve & Rewrite

Weak version — rewrite it in your notebook first, then compare:

Plastic is a big problem nowadays. There is plastic everywhere and animals die. The government should ban plastic and people should recycle more and be responsible. In conclusion, we must solve this problem together before it is too late.

See an improved version

One city block of beach, cleaned by volunteers last spring, produced 400 kilograms of plastic — most of it bottles and bags used for under an hour. The problem is not that plastic exists; it is that we engineered a permanent material for disposable moments. The first fix is therefore a deposit: ten cents returned per bottle, the system that gives Germany return rates above 95 percent. Its weakness is retail resistance, answered by the second fix — machines at the stores that profit from the traffic the returns create. Start with the deposit law in one state, publish the return rate monthly, and let the number recruit the neighbors.

Quick Quiz

Keep going

📘 Grammar deep-dive: Passive Voice: be + past participle 🌱 Vocabulary Builder: the B1 Nature Environment set 🎓 TOEFL Writing: the exam version of this skill

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