The given pie charts compare the expenses in 7 different categories in 1966 and 1996 by American Citizens.
Sample Response
The two provided pie charts compare the Americans' expenditureexpenditure of Americans in 7 different categories, namelycategories namely food, cars, petrol, restaurants, furniture, computers, and booksbook between 1966 and 1996. It is evident from the information provided that foodfoods and cars made up the largest sharesbiggest proportions of spending among Americans in both years. Specifically, in 1966, the highest proportion of expenses went to food with 44% of total expenditure44% of the total expense, followed by cars with 23%. After 30 years, this figure observed a reversal when the spending for cars accounted for a massive 45% while that for food dropped to just 14%. Turning to the remaining categoriesTurning to the other expenses, petrol and furniture accountedstood for roughly equal proportions of money spent atwith 9% and 10% respectively in 1966 and both at 8% in 1996both 8% in 1996. The expenditure for restaurant experienced an increase of 7% in 1966 and a double to 14% after 30 years. Notably,It is also interesting to note that the spending on books and computers moved in opposite directionschanged conversely. Over the 30-year period, the figure for books declined from 6% to a negligible 1%. In contrast,1%, in contrast, money spent on computers underwent remarkable growtha remarkable growth from 1% to 10%. In short, Americans spent most of their money on food and cars in both 1966 and 1996, and the spending for computers increased considerably after 30 years.
Why this response received Band 7.5
The response gives an accurate, well-selected account of both charts, with a clear overview and effective comparisons across all seven categories. Its main weakness is language precision: several unnatural collocations and one awkward sentence about restaurant spending reduce fluency, so the highest-priority improvement is to use more idiomatic data-description phrases and check sentence boundaries while preserving the strong coverage.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The response provides a clear overview and accurately reports the principal changes and figures across all seven categories.
Make the overview even more selective by foregrounding the largest shifts, particularly the reversal between food and cars.
Coherence and Cohesion
Information progresses logically from the dominant categories to the smaller ones, with generally effective paragraph-level cohesion.
Avoid repeating the overview in the final sentence and separate contrasting observations with fully controlled sentence boundaries.
Lexical Resource
A good range of trend and comparison vocabulary is evident, though collocations such as 'foods' and 'this figure observed a reversal' are unnatural.
Use conventional data-description phrases such as 'spending on food' and 'the proportions were reversed' for greater precision.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Varied complex structures are mostly accurate, but the restaurant sentence and a comma splice weaken grammatical control.
Proofread complex comparison sentences for article use, noun form, and punctuation before finalizing the response.
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The given pie charts compare the expenses in 7 different categories in 1966 and 1996 by American Citizens.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.