The charts below give information about the price of tickets on one airline between Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, over a two-week period in 2013.
Sample Response
The given columncolumns graphs compare the price of tickets forin an airline between Sydney and Melbourne over a two-week perioda two week period in 2013. On Monday of the first weekMonday of 1st week, the airline ticket prices roserise to $80, and on Monday of the second weekon the 2nd week of Monday, they fellit falls down to $50.
As shown above, the prices only fluctuate on Monday, and the rest of the weekdays are rather the same in the airline which travels Sydney to Melbourne in 2013. It can be clearly seen from the graph, the price of airline tickets are highest on Fridays.
In contrast, the highest farehighest price date when travelling from Melbourne to Sydney in week 1 was Friday with $80, followed by Monday and Saturday with $60. Moving forward to next week, there were declines in prices but Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday became stagnant with $35.
In terms of airline ticket prices in week 2the ticket price in an airline in week two, the two routes showedthey showed a similar patternthe similarity because weekend dayswhen the weekend days ticket prices seemedticket price seem to be higher thanhigher more than those on other days while midweek pricesmiddle days price were generally the lowestdid not show any clear price difference which constantly accounted for the lowest cost.
Why this response received Band 5.5
The response identifies several relevant prices and makes some useful comparisons between the weeks and travel directions. Its main limitation is an imprecise overview and incomplete coverage, including the inaccurate claim that Friday prices are always highest. The priority is to select the main patterns across both charts, distinguish exceptions such as the first Monday from general trends, and support each comparison with accurate figures.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The response reports some accurate figures and comparisons, but the overview is vague and includes an inaccurate statement about Friday having the highest prices.
Summarise the dominant weekday pattern and the main week-to-week differences for both directions, then verify every stated maximum against the charts.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response is divided into paragraphs and generally moves from one route to the other, although the final paragraph repeats ideas vaguely and comparisons are not consistently grouped.
Organise the details into two clearly defined route-based paragraphs and use each paragraph to compare the same days or weeks directly.
Lexical Resource
There is a reasonable range of chart language, but awkward collocations such as “highest price date” and “showed the similarity” reduce precision.
Use natural data-description phrases such as “the highest fare,” “remained unchanged,” and “was higher than” consistently.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A mix of sentence forms is attempted, but frequent errors in agreement, articles, comparison structures, and clause construction weaken clarity.
Check each sentence for subject-verb agreement and form comparisons with concise structures such as “fares were higher at weekends than on weekdays.”
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The charts below give information about the price of tickets on one airline between Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, over a two-week period in 2013.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.