The chart below shows the donations given to six different types of charity by one company from 2012 to 2014.
Sample Response
The bar chart shows how much money was donated by a company to six different charities (social welfare, education, environment, health, wildlife, and arts) from 2012 to 2014. The numbers are shown in thousands of dollars. Overall, social welfare received the most fundinggot the most money in all three years, while wildlife and arts received the least. Donations to health went up each year, but education and environment donations went down over time. Social welfare received the highest donations every year. It started at about $2120,000 in 2012, felldropped a bit to $18,000 in 2013, and then rose to $24,000then rose to nearly $25,000 in 2014. Health charities also received progressively more fundinggot more funding each year, rising from $6,000 in 2012starting at $6,000 in 2012 and reaching $910,000 in 2014. Educational and environmental charitiesEducation and environment charities received intermediate amountswere in the middle range. Education began at about $8,000 in 2012 but dropped to around $6,000 in 2013 before returning to $8,000 in 2014$5,000 in 2013 and 2014. Environmental donations stood at $8,000 in 2012The environment started at about $8,000 in 2012 but fell to $5,000 in 2013 before recovering to $7,000 in 2014fell slightly to $7,000 by 2014. Wildlife and arts received the smallest amountsWildlife and arts received the least money. Wildlife donations went up from $32,000 in 2012 to $5,000 in 2014. Arts stayed at about $3,000 in 2012 and 2013 and rose slightly to $4,000 in 2014almost $5,000 in 2014.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response is clear, comprehensive in category coverage, and generally accurate in identifying the dominant and smallest recipients. Its main weakness is data accuracy: education did not decline overall, while several yearly figures for education, health, and wildlife are misstated or overly approximate. The highest-priority improvement is to verify every bar carefully and describe fluctuating patterns rather than simplifying them into continuous rises or falls.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The response provides a clear overview and covers all six charities, but it misreports education's pattern and several values.
Check each year's bars systematically, especially the fall and recovery in education and the precise health and wildlife figures.
Coherence and Cohesion
Information is logically grouped by donation level and trend, although the response forms one dense paragraph and repeats some points.
Separate the overview from two focused detail paragraphs and avoid restating the same ranking before presenting the data.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is sufficiently varied and generally precise, with appropriate terms for donations, movement, and relative levels.
Use more exact trend language such as dipped then recovered and replace informal wording such as got with received.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A mix of simple and complex sentence forms is used accurately, and grammatical errors are rare.
Develop slightly more varied comparison structures while maintaining the response's strong control of tense and agreement.
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The chart below shows the donations given to six different types of charity by one company from 2012 to 2014.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.