Writing Task 1: Bar Chart: Question 4
Syllabus W.task1
The chart below shows the percentage of commuters using five different modes of transport to travel to work in Melbourne, Utrecht and Nairobi in 2024. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words.
| Mode of transport | Melbourne (%) | Utrecht (%) | Nairobi (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Car | 58 | 22 | 18 |
| Bus/minibus | 14 | 6 | 47 |
| Train/metro | 16 | 10 | 3 |
| Bicycle | 4 | 52 | 5 |
| Walking | 8 | 10 | 27 |
The bar chart is a grouped bar chart with the five transport modes on the horizontal axis and one bar per city for each mode, with the percentage of commuters shown on the vertical axis; figures for each city sum to 100%.
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Worked solution
Examiner notes: why this is a band 9 response
Task Achievement
The overview states the single clearest pattern in the data, that each city has its own dominant transport mode and no mode dominates everywhere, which is a genuine synthesis rather than a restatement of one figure. Every mode is covered at least once with an accurate figure, and the three most striking values (58%, 52% and 47%) are all foregrounded with direct comparisons back to the other two cities.
Coherence & Cohesion
The response is organised around each city’s defining mode in turn (car in Melbourne, bicycle in Utrecht, bus/minibus and walking in Nairobi) with the final sentence grouping the one genuinely unremarkable category, train/metro, across all three cities. Contrast is signalled explicitly (“By contrast”, “whereas”) so the comparative relationship between cities is always clear rather than implied.
Lexical Resource
The response varies its multiplicative language precisely (“more than double”, “more than three times”, “almost eight times”) instead of repeating “much more than” throughout, and uses topic-appropriate collocations such as “heavy reliance on” and “the preferred mode”. Numbers are consistently paired with the correct city and mode, avoiding any ambiguous reference.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
A range of comparative and superlative structures is controlled accurately throughout, including comparative ratios (“more than three times the equivalent figure for Melbourne”) and parenthetical figures set off correctly with commas. Passive and active structures are both used appropriately (“was used by”, “chose”), and there are no errors of preposition or agreement despite the density of numerical comparisons.
Common pitfalls specific to this task
See commonMistakes above: the most damaging is assuming the car dominates every city, which a careful read of the Nairobi and Utrecht columns immediately disproves, band 9 responses verify a generalisation against every group before writing it.