Writing Task 1: Pie Chart & Table: Question 3

Worked solution

Examiner notes: why this is a band 9 response

Task Achievement

The overview identifies the two most reportable features of a fifteen-cell table (the country with the highest total, and the one country whose spending pattern by category differs from the other two) before any individual figure appears. Every comparison made is checked against the total row, and the response correctly identifies that shopping, not accommodation, is Sarova’s largest category, avoiding a common inaccuracy.

Coherence & Cohesion

Rather than working column by column, the report groups countries by shared or contrasting patterns (Corvale and Lindmere sharing an accommodation-led pattern; Sarova diverging from it), which is signalled explicitly (“unlike the other two countries”, “the reverse of the Sarova pattern”). The final paragraph closes with a comparison that echoes the overview, giving the report a clear circular structure.

Lexical Resource

Precise data-reporting collocations are used throughout without repetition: “driven mainly by”, “overtaken by”, “prioritising shopping over accommodation”. The phrase “broadly similar overall totals” is used accurately to describe two figures that are close but not identical (1,010 and 1,130 dollars), showing controlled use of approximation language.

Grammatical Range & Accuracy

Complex comparative structures are used with full control, including double comparisons within a single clause (“considerably more than… and… spent in Sarova”) and a well-formed concessive clause (“despite very different spending patterns”). Numerical values and currency are formatted and punctuated consistently throughout.

Common pitfalls specific to this task

See commonMistakes above: the most damaging is conflating a country’s largest individual category with its overall total. A band 9 response must check every superlative claim (“spends the most”) against the actual total-per-visitor row rather than the most visually striking single cell.