Writing Task 1: Pie Chart & Table: Question 4
Syllabus W.task1
The pie chart below shows the composition of household waste collected in the town of Greenhollow in 2023.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words.
| Waste category | Share of total waste |
|---|---|
| Organic and food waste | 38% |
| Paper and cardboard | 21% |
| Plastic | 17% |
| Glass | 9% |
| Metal | 6% |
| Textiles | 5% |
| Other | 4% |
Source: Greenhollow Municipal Waste Report, 2023.
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Worked solution
Examiner notes: why this is a band 9 response
Task Achievement
The overview names the two clearest features of a seven-category pie chart, the dominance of organic waste and the small combined share of the four minor categories, before any supporting detail. All seven figures are reported with accurate rounding language (“close to two-fifths”), and the response stays strictly descriptive, never suggesting how the town should manage its waste.
Coherence & Cohesion
The report is organised from largest to smallest category across two body paragraphs, with a clear dividing line between the three major categories and the four minor ones, signalled by “the remaining four categories were considerably smaller”. The concluding sentence returns to the overview’s central claim, reinforcing the report’s overall shape.
Lexical Resource
A varied set of proportion expressions is used accurately and without repetition: “comfortably the single largest category”, “a gap of four percentage points”, “none of these four categories individually reached one-tenth”. This range goes well beyond repeatedly stating raw percentages.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
Passive and impersonal report structures are handled correctly throughout (“waste collected in the town”, “an unspecified ‘other’ category made up”), and comparative constructions with fractions (“close to two-fifths”, “more than three-quarters”) are formed accurately. There are no errors of agreement between the singular category nouns and their percentage values.
Common pitfalls specific to this task
See commonMistakes above: the most damaging is rounding 38% up to “about half”, since this single inaccurate approximation undermines the accuracy of the entire overview and would be penalised under Task Achievement even if every other figure in the report is correct.