Writing Task 1: Bar Chart: Question 10
Syllabus W.task1
The bar chart below shows the percentage of the workforce employed in agriculture, industry and services in four regions of the country of Valdoria, based on the most recent national labour-force survey. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Each region has three bars, one per sector, and the three percentages for each region add up to 100%.
| Region | Agriculture (%) | Industry (%) | Services (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Northern | 42 | 31 | 27 |
| Coastal | 8 | 24 | 68 |
| Central | 35 | 40 | 25 |
| Southern | 55 | 15 | 30 |
Write at least 150 words.
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Worked solution
Task overview
Four regions, three sectors each summing to 100%, make this the most structurally demanding chart in the set: a Band 9 answer must identify which sector leads in each region individually, since the leading sector changes from region to region rather than following one simple rule.
Why this model answer scores Band 9
- Task Achievement: The overview immediately flags the genuinely surprising feature (that industry, not agriculture or services, leads in the Central region) alongside the clearer Coastal/service and Southern/agriculture contrasts, and all twelve percentages (42, 31, 27, 8, 24, 68, 35, 40, 25, 55, 15, 30) match the table exactly.
- Coherence & Cohesion: The report moves region by region, using “By contrast”, “showed a broadly similar but less extreme pattern”, and “diverged from the other three” to signal explicitly how each new region relates to the ones already discussed.
- Lexical Resource: Sector-specific and comparative vocabulary (“overwhelmingly service-based”, “more than double”, “the most evenly balanced workforce”, “narrowly ahead”) is used accurately and without repetition across four regions.
- Grammatical Range & Accuracy: Sentences combining coordination and comparison (“which took just 15% and 30% respectively”) and a fronted contrastive clause (“By contrast, the Southern region depended most heavily on agriculture”) demonstrate accurate control of complex grammar.
Common pitfalls specific to this task
- Claiming agriculture was the largest sector “everywhere except Coastal”, which overlooks that industry, not services, leads in Central.
- Adding the regions’ percentages together across categories in a way that implies a national total, when the chart only permits comparison within and between regions, not a combined figure.
- Writing “the Central region has no clear leading sector” because 40% and 35% are close, when 40% is still unambiguously the largest of the three figures for that region.