Writing Task 1: Pie Chart & Table: Question 2

Worked solution

Examiner notes: why this is a band 9 response

Task Achievement

The overview names the two most significant features, housing’s dominance and the small combined share of the lowest categories, before any individual figure is given. Every one of the nine percentages is reported accurately, but the response groups the smallest categories together rather than describing all nine with equal weight, and no opinion or recommendation about spending habits is offered.

Coherence & Cohesion

Paragraphs move from largest to smallest category, a logical organising principle signalled by phrases such as “at the lower end of the scale” and “the remaining two categories”. The concluding sentence draws housing and food together to make a final comparative point, giving the report a clear sense of closure rather than simply stopping after the last figure.

Lexical Resource

Report-appropriate vocabulary is used precisely and without repetition: “absorbed”, “outgoing”, “took up”, “put aside”, “unspecified items”. The comparison “nearly double” is more sophisticated and accurate than a repeated use of “more than” across every sentence.

Grammatical Range & Accuracy

A range of comparative structures is used with full control, including “over a third”, “broadly similar”, and “exactly half of the transport figure alone”, each requiring different grammatical patterns. Subject-verb agreement is maintained correctly throughout despite the shift between singular category nouns and plural income figures.

Common pitfalls specific to this task

See commonMistakes above: the most damaging is failing to open with a genuine overview sentence. A band 9 response must let the examiner see the two or three biggest patterns immediately, not only after reading every individual percentage in table order.