Writing Task 1: Map / Plan (change over time): Question 2
Syllabus W.task1
The two maps below show the small island of Kelder in 2000 and 2024. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words.
Kelder Island in 2000
A lighthouse stood at the easternmost point of the island. On the northern coast, roughly halfway along it, a small fishing village consisted of a cluster of wooden huts and a short wooden jetty. Dense forest covered the whole of the central and southern parts of the island, from just south of the village down to the southern coast. Along the western coast lay a sandy beach, empty and undeveloped. A single dirt path led from the village, around the western edge of the forest, south to the beach. There was no airstrip and no other made road; the rest of the island could be reached only on foot.
Kelder Island in 2024
The lighthouse at the eastern tip remains unchanged. The fishing village on the north coast has been demolished and replaced by a resort hotel with a new pier in the same location. The dirt path from the hotel to the beach has been paved into a road. Much of the forest immediately south of the hotel has been cleared and replaced by a golf course occupying the centre of the island, with a strip of forest remaining only along the southern coast. The western beach has been developed with a line of beach huts and a beach bar. A new road runs from the resort hotel south-east, through the golf course, to a small airstrip built near the south-eastern coast, close to the lighthouse.
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Worked solution
Examiner notes: why this is a band 9 response
Task Achievement
The overview names the single overarching change, undeveloped island to purpose-built resort, before the body reports every significant feature accurately against the two maps: village to hotel, path to road, forest to golf course, empty beach to developed beach, and the newly built airstrip. No feature from either map is omitted, and no unsupported reasons are added.
Coherence & Cohesion
The response follows a consistent order across both time periods (settlement, route, land cover, coastline, then transport) so the reader can track each feature from its 2000 state to its 2024 state. The unchanged lighthouse is used briefly to anchor the reader’s sense of direction (south-east) without becoming a distraction from the main changes.
Lexical Resource
A wide range of precise change vocabulary is used without repetition: “has been replaced by”, “has become”, “cleared”, “occupies”, “remains”, “has been developed with”. Location language (“skirting the forest”, “near the lighthouse in the south-east”) is accurate and varied rather than formulaic.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
Simple past narrates the fixed 2000 map (“was”, “ran”, “covered”), while present perfect passive and active forms report the completed changes seen by 2024 (“has been replaced”, “has become”, “has been developed with”), maintained consistently and accurately throughout with no tense slips.
Common pitfalls specific to this task
See commonMistakes above: the most damaging is treating new features such as the golf course as pre-existing, which misreports the direction of change and can even reverse a comparison.