Writing Task 1: Bar Chart: Question 7
Syllabus W.task1
The bar chart below shows the main reason given by adults in three age groups for their most recent trip away from home, based on a survey of 500 residents of the town of Fairbridge. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
The chart has five reason categories on the horizontal axis, each with three bars showing the percentage of each age group who gave that reason.
| Main reason for trip | 18-34 (%) | 35-59 (%) | 60+ (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Work or business | 38 | 45 | 8 |
| Visiting family | 22 | 20 | 35 |
| Holiday or leisure | 30 | 27 | 48 |
| Study | 8 | 2 | 1 |
| Other | 2 | 6 | 8 |
Write at least 150 words.
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Worked solution
Task overview
This chart tests the ability to summarise a three-way comparison across five categories without simply listing fifteen percentages in the order given. A strong answer groups the two younger age groups together (work-dominated) and separates out the 60+ group (leisure- and family-dominated), which is the genuine pattern in the data.
Why this model answer scores Band 9
- Task Achievement: The overview states the two clearest contrasts in the data, work dominating among younger adults versus leisure and family dominating among the 60+ group, and every percentage cited (38, 30, 22, 8, 2, 45, 27, 20, 48, 35, 8, 1, 8) is reported exactly as given.
- Coherence & Cohesion: The report is organised age group by age group, with “closely followed by”, “while”, and “though” used to link related figures within a sentence rather than starting a new sentence for every single number.
- Lexical Resource: Varied reporting language avoids repetition (“cited”, “dominant”, “the picture changed markedly”, “almost non-existent”) while paraphrasing the chart’s own category labels rather than copying them verbatim throughout.
- Grammatical Range & Accuracy: Comparative and superlative structures (“even more dominant”, “its highest share of any group”, “the joint-highest”) are used accurately, alongside correctly punctuated complex sentences joining two or three clauses.
Common pitfalls specific to this task
- Writing “young people never visit family” because visiting family is not their top reason, when the table shows 22% of 18-34 year olds still gave it as their main reason.
- Comparing only work or business across the three groups and ignoring the other four reasons, which loses marks for incomplete coverage of the data.
- Using the phrase “the majority of” for a figure like 45%, which is not actually a majority (over 50%) of that age group.