The bar chart below shows shares of expenditures for five major categories in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Japan in the year 2009.
Sample Response
The bar graph compares how much Americans, Canadians, BritonsEnglish and Japanese residents spentJapanese spent on food, housing, transportation, healthcare and clothing in 2009.
Generally speaking, housing and food accounted for larger shares of spending bycost more to residents of these countries than the other categoriesthese nationalities than other expenses in thatthis year. As shown in the bar chartAs is given in the column graph, Japanese spent around 23% of their expenditurearound 23% money on food and this ratio was higher than that of other nationalities. UK residents’ spending on food was one-fifth of their total expenditure while it was less than 15% for the citizens of the USA and Canada. Housing, on average,Housing on an average accounted fordrained the largest share of expenditurehighest percentages of money, and its share was highest in the United Statesit was more expensive in the United States as more than one-fourth of their money was spent on housingwent on arranging accommodation. Residents of the other countriesAll other nationalities had to spend between 20% – 24% for housing. Transportation cost, on the other hand, was highest in Canada and one-fifth of Canadian spending wasone-fifth of spending by Canadians were for commuting. Japanese people spent the least on commuting and it was 10% of their expenses. Interestingly, these nationalities spent around 5% of their expenditurearound 5% money on clothing which was slightly higher than that of their medical expenses. US residentsUs citizens had to spend the highest on healthcare which accounted for around 7% of their expenditurecost while it was the lowest in the UK.
Why this response received Band 7.0
The response selects a broad range of relevant figures and makes several useful cross-country comparisons, especially for housing, food, and transport. Its main limitation is uneven precision: Canada is not below 15% for food, and the clothing-versus-health generalisation does not hold for the United States. Prioritise checking every comparative claim against the chart, then present the details in clearer category-based paragraphs.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The response provides a valid overview and covers all categories with useful comparisons, but a few numerical and generalised claims are inaccurate.
Check exceptions carefully, especially Canada's food share and the United States' higher healthcare than clothing expenditure.
Coherence and Cohesion
The description follows a generally logical category sequence, though nearly all details are compressed into one long paragraph.
Separate the major categories from the smaller healthcare and clothing figures to strengthen paragraphing and comparison.
Lexical Resource
There is sufficient range for the task, but awkward collocations such as "cost more to," "spent 23% money," and "drained" reduce precision.
Use standard statistical phrasing such as "accounted for 23%," "spent on," and "the largest share of expenditure."
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response uses varied sentence structures, but recurring article, agreement, capitalization, and preposition errors weaken control.
Review noun phrases and agreement, for example "23% of their money" and "one-fifth of Canadian expenditure was spent on transport."
Write this task while it is fresh
Try the same task now. It helps you remember the feedback and write better next time.
IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The bar chart below shows shares of expenditures for five major categories in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Japan in the year 2009.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.