The charts below give information about travel to and from the UK, and about the most popular countries for UK residents to visit.
Sample Response
The chartsillustration outlines how many foreign tourists travelled to the UK and how many UK residents travelled abroadwent out to travel between 1979 and 1999. The second chartMoreover, it also shows where those UK citizens went in 1999. Overall, the number of overseas visitors to the UKinflux of tourists in the UK was lowerfewer than the number of British who travelled outside, and France was their favourite destination. In detaildetails, 10 million tourists visited the United Kingdom in 1979 while around 13 million UK residents travelled abroadBritish spent their holidays out of the country. From 1979 to 1999, the number of UK residents travelling abroadoutbound UK residents' number was higher than the number of overseas visitors to the UKinrush of foreign tourists in the UK. The gap widenedwidens in later years and finally, in 1999and finally in 1999, almost 55 million UK residents travelled abroadBritish left the country to travel outside while just over 25 million overseas residents visited the UKother nationalities entered the UK border as tourists. France was the favourite destination forto British travellers as more than 10 million British travelled there in 1999. With around 2 million UK tourists, Turkey was their least popular destinationleast preferred holiday place. Spain was visited by approximately 8 million UK travellers, whichUK travellers which made it the second most popular destination thatthis year. USA and Greece received the third and fourth most-visited places by UK tourists with between 2 to 3 million tourists each.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response’s strongest feature is its clear overview and broad coverage of both charts, with accurate starting and ending comparisons and the correct destination ranking. Its main limitation is precision: Spain is understated, the USA is incorrectly placed in the two-to-three-million range, and several travel expressions are unnatural. Prioritise checking each destination value against the bar chart and presenting the two datasets in separate, clearly organised detail paragraphs.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The report gives a clear overview, accurately describes the widening travel gap, and covers all five destinations, though some bar-chart values are imprecise.
Correct Spain to about 9 million and the USA to about 4 million, while retaining the accurate ranking.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response moves logically from overall trends to destination rankings, but presenting everything in one paragraph limits structural clarity.
Use one overview paragraph, one paragraph for travel trends, and one for the five destinations.
Lexical Resource
A reasonable range of travel vocabulary is attempted, but recurrent combinations such as ‘influx was fewer’, ‘inrush of tourists’, and ‘received the third place’ are unnatural.
Use standard phrases such as ‘fewer visitors arrived’, ‘outbound travel’, and ‘ranked third’.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response uses varied sentence structures, although errors with comparisons, articles, prepositions, tense consistency, and nationality nouns recur.
Review comparative structures and use ‘UK residents’ or ‘British people’ rather than ‘the number of British’ or ‘million British’.
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The charts below give information about travel to and from the UK, and about the most popular countries for UK residents to visit.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.