Writing Task 1: Bar Chart: Question 3
Syllabus W.task1
The chart below shows the percentage of electricity generated from four different sources in South Korea, Poland and Norway in 2024. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words.
| Source | South Korea (%) | Poland (%) | Norway (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coal | 33 | 62 | 0 |
| Natural gas | 27 | 8 | 1 |
| Nuclear power | 29 | 0 | 0 |
| Renewables | 11 | 30 | 99 |
The bar chart is a grouped bar chart with the four electricity sources on the horizontal axis and one bar per country for each source, with the percentage of total electricity generated shown on the vertical axis; figures for each country sum to 100%.
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Worked solution
Examiner notes: why this is a band 9 response
Task Achievement
The overview immediately names the two most extreme, defining features of the data, Norway’s dominance of renewables and Poland’s dominance of coal, before any supporting figures appear, which is exactly what a band 9 overview requires. South Korea’s more balanced profile, a genuinely distinct feature rather than a compromise between the other two, is also reported with full supporting figures, so all three countries and all four sources are covered.
Coherence & Cohesion
The response is organised by country rather than by source, which suits data where each country has one dominant, defining feature; a signalling phrase (“close to the opposite pattern”) explicitly links Poland’s paragraph back to Norway’s, and “considerably more balanced than either of the other two countries” links South Korea’s paragraph back to both previous ones, giving the whole response a clear comparative thread.
Lexical Resource
Precise proportional language is used throughout (“virtually the entire national supply”, “a distant second”, “considerably more balanced”) alongside accurate paraphrase of round numbers as fractions (“almost two-thirds of the total” for 62%). No source name is ever substituted with an inaccurate synonym, which matters in a technical topic like energy sources.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
A wide range of structures is used with full accuracy, including reduced relative clauses (“coal and nuclear power contributed nothing at all, at 0% each”), fronted contrast structures (“Poland showed close to the opposite pattern”), and correctly punctuated appositive figures throughout. There are no errors of number agreement even though the response handles four data sources across three countries.
Common pitfalls specific to this task
See commonMistakes above: the most damaging is treating Norway’s 99% as “all” or “100%”, which misreports the actual figure. Band 9 responses report the exact percentage given, however close to a round number it is.