The chart below shows the proportion of businesses making e-commerce purchases by industry in Canada between 2015 and 2019.
Sample Response
The bar chart illustratesdelineates the proportion of businesses making e-commerce purchasesthe percentage of online purchases made by businesses in different sectors in Canada over the five-year period from 2015 to 2019during five consecutive years, from 2015 to 2019. Overall,The first impression from the chart is that the proportion of businesses making purchases generally increasedthe number of purchases generally increased, despite periodic fluctuations. It is also clear that Information and Communications businesses made the highest proportion of businesses making e-commerce purchasesthe highest number of e-commerce purchases throughout the periodduring the given time. construction and wholesaleConstruction and Wholesale were the two industries that increased every yearexperienced consistent increases. The proportion of construction businesses making purchasesThe proportion of purchases in Construction started at just over 20% in 2015 before soaring to roughly 5855% four years later. The wholesale figureThe figure of Wholesale experienced a similar pattern, climbingthe same pattern when it climbed from 40% to around 61%. In 2015, the retail and information and communications sectorsthe Retail sector and Information and Communication sector recorded figures of 30% and 60%, respectively. The proportion of Retail rose rapidly to approximately 58% in 2018, followed by a marginal dip of around 1% in 2019. Similarly, the figure for the latter increased gradually to nearly 75% in 2018 before undergoing a decline to 70% in the last year. Meanwhile, the proportion of manufacturing businesses making purchasesthe percentage of purchases in the Manufacturing industry surged from around 30% to nearly double that in five years, despite a drop to about 43% in 2017.
Why this response received Band 7.0
The response selects all five industries, identifies the dominant sector, and uses varied grammatical structures to describe changes over time. Its main limitation is data precision: it repeatedly frames the measure as purchases rather than businesses making purchases, and the Retail figures for the final years are substantially understated. The highest-priority improvement is to verify the metric and each quoted value before organising accurate comparisons into separate paragraphs.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The response provides a relevant overview and covers every industry, but it misstates the measured quantity and reports the Retail peak and final value inaccurately.
Describe proportions of businesses consistently and correct Retail to about seventy percent in 2018 with only a slight fall in 2019.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas follow a generally logical industry-by-industry sequence, although the entire report forms one long paragraph and some comparisons are loosely grouped.
Use a separate overview and group the steadily rising sectors apart from those that fluctuate.
Lexical Resource
The response uses a good range of trend language, but several noun phrases are imprecise or awkward for the chart's metric.
Prefer proportions of businesses and the figure for a sector over number of purchases and figure of Wholesale.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Complex comparative and time-clause structures are varied and generally accurate, with meaning remaining clear throughout.
Polish article use and comparative phrasing, especially constructions such as nearly double that, to improve precision.
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The chart below shows the proportion of businesses making e-commerce purchases by industry in Canada between 2015 and 2019.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.