The chart below shows the changes in sales of four different types of books from 2002 to 2012.
Sample Response
The bar graph compares the sales of four book genres between 2002 to 2012. Overall, history books vend increased remarkably while the admiration for hobby related books declined over the period. As is presented in the illustration, history books had the highest demand in the market as it made more than 4000 trades in 2002. In this year the sale of hobby related books was the lowest, less than 1000, while entertainment and art books each recorded around 2000 sales volume. After 4 years, history books trade doubled while art and entertainment categories each made approximately 3000 sales. Hobby books’ demand slightly increased in 2002 but dropped in 2004. In all the following years, the sales of hobby books remained constant and had always been the lowest around 200 sales. On the contrary, history books’ sale reached to over 10,000 in 2008, the peak for the sale of any genre of books, and finally stood at around 9.5 thousand in 2012. Moreover, demand for entertainment and art books were almost the same in 2006 and 2008, just over 3000, but on the subsequent years, art books sales outranked the entertainment books sales.
IELTS Writing Correction
- 1. Fix the range phrase Original: between 2002 to 2012 Suggested revision: between 2002 and 2012 Why it matters: “Between” must be paired with “and” rather than “to”.
- 2. Use the correct noun Original: history books vend Suggested revision: sales of history books Why it matters: “Vend” is not an appropriate noun for the number of copies sold.
- 3. Describe sales directly Original: admiration for hobby related books Suggested revision: sales of hobby-related books Why it matters: The chart measures sales rather than readers’ admiration.
- 4. Fix pronoun agreement Original: it made Suggested revision: they recorded Why it matters: The plural noun “history books” requires a plural pronoun and verb.
- 5. Report units accurately Original: more than 4000 trades Suggested revision: about 4,500 copies sold Why it matters: The 2002 bar is approximately 4.5 thousand copies, and “trades” is the wrong unit.
- 6. Improve time reference Original: In this year Suggested revision: That year, Why it matters: This is the natural way to refer back to 2002.
- 7. Use the chart unit Original: around 2000 sales volume Suggested revision: around 2,000 copies Why it matters: The graph reports book copies sold, not a count called “sales volume”.
- 8. Qualify the increase Original: history books trade doubled Suggested revision: sales of history books almost doubled Why it matters: The rise from about 4.5 to just over 8 thousand was slightly less than a doubling.
- 9. Use copies as unit Original: approximately 3000 sales Suggested revision: approximately 3,000 copies Why it matters: The horizontal axis measures thousands of copies sold.
- 10. Use comparison linker Original: On the contrary Suggested revision: By contrast Why it matters: This compares two trends rather than contradicting a previous claim.
- 11. Use plural sales Original: history books’ sale Suggested revision: sales of history books Why it matters: The plural noun “sales” is needed for the series over time.
- 12. Remove extra preposition Original: reached to Suggested revision: reached Why it matters: The verb “reach” takes the value directly without “to”.
Suggested Rewrites
- between 2002 to 2012 between 2002 and 2012
- history books vend sales of history books
- admiration for hobby related books sales of hobby-related books
- it made they recorded
- more than 4000 trades about 4,500 copies sold
- In this year That year,
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response gives a clear overview and covers the main movements, especially the strong rise in history-book sales and the persistent weakness of hobbies books. However, several dates and figures are imprecise, and awkward word choices and recurring grammatical errors reduce precision. The highest-priority improvement is to verify each comparison against the chart and express figures with conventional sales vocabulary and consistently accurate sentence structures.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Detailed feedback by IELTS writing criterion after the annotated essay.
Task Achievement
A clear overview and most major trends are reported, but the timing of the hobbies change and several figures are slightly inaccurate.
Check every year-value pairing and state that hobbies rose to 2004 before falling, while history peaked at about 10,000 in 2008.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response follows a generally logical chronology, though placing all details in one paragraph and using some mechanical transitions weakens the organisation.
Separate the overview from two grouped detail paragraphs and use comparisons rather than repeated sequencing phrases.
Lexical Resource
The vocabulary covers trends and comparisons, but frequent miscollocations such as ‘vend’, ‘trades’, and ‘admiration’ reduce precision.
Use standard chart language such as sales rose, copies sold, demand fell, and exceeded.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A mix of sentence forms communicates the message, but agreement, preposition, possessive, and noun-form errors recur.
Proofread subject-verb agreement and noun phrases, especially history-book sales, art-book sales, and rose to.
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The chart below shows the changes in sales of four different types of books from 2002 to 2012.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.