IELTS Writing Task 1 Plan: St Anwen's Hospital Site Redevelopment

The two plans below show the grounds of St Anwen's Hospital in 2008 and 2023. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words.

St Anwen's Hospital site in 2008

The site was bounded by Grove Road to the north and Elm Street to the east, with a river forming its southern boundary. A large three-storey main hospital building stood in the centre of the site. To its west stood a separate, older building, a Victorian-era wing used as a maternity unit. To its east, between the main building and Elm Street, was a helicopter landing pad. In the north-west corner of the site, fronting Grove Road, stood a small single-storey outpatients' clinic. Along the southern edge of the site, next to the river, was a car park with around 100 spaces. The only entrance to the site was from Grove Road, beside the outpatients' clinic.

St Anwen's Hospital site in 2023

Grove Road, Elm Street and the river remain in the same positions, and the main hospital building in the centre of the site is unchanged. The Victorian maternity wing to its west has been demolished and replaced by a new multi-storey car park on the same site. The original car park along the southern edge, beside the river, has been removed and replaced by a landscaped park with a footpath along the riverbank. The helicopter landing pad has been relocated from east of the main building to the north-east corner of the site, and a new outpatients' wing, connected to the main building by a covered walkway, has been built on the site of the old helipad. The single-storey outpatients' clinic in the north-west corner has been demolished and replaced by a staff accommodation block; the site entrance from Grove Road remains in the same place, beside the new staff block.

Examiner notes: why this is a band 9 response

Task Achievement

The overview identifies two overarching trends (clinical facilities replacing older buildings, and green space replacing riverside parking) before the body accurately reports every specific change: maternity wing to car park, car park to park, helipad relocated, clinic to staff block, with the new outpatients’ wing correctly placed on the vacated helipad site.

Coherence & Cohesion

Both plans are described in the same fixed order (boundaries, centre, west, east, north-west corner, south), which lets the reader track each part of the site directly from the 2008 plan to the 2023 plan. The relationship between the old and new helipad sites is made explicit (“the vacated land”) rather than left for the reader to infer.

Lexical Resource

Precise siting and change vocabulary is used without repetition: “demolished and replaced by”, “removed and replaced by”, “moved to”, “vacated”, “linked to… by a covered walkway”. Building types are named accurately (multi-storey car park, landscaped park, staff block) rather than described vaguely.

Grammatical Range & Accuracy

Simple past narrates the fixed 2008 plan (“was”, “stood”, “ran”), and past perfect passive narrates completed changes as seen from the 2023 viewpoint (“had been demolished and replaced”, “had been moved”, “had been removed”), a controlled and accurate distinction maintained throughout.

Common pitfalls specific to this task

See commonMistakes above: the most damaging is failing to state both the old and new location of a relocated feature such as the helipad, which leaves a key spatial change unreported.