Chorleywood is a village near London whose population has increased steadily since the middle of the nineteenth century. The map below shows the development of the village.
Sample Response
The illustration delineates how the development of Chorleywood village nearin London took place from 1868 to 1994, over a period of 125 years. Generally speaking, developmentdevelopment works in this rural area proceeded much more rapidlymuch rapidly fromduring 1970 to 1994 than in previous decadesthan that or previous decades. As the graph suggests, improvement in Chorleywood village was limited during the 19th century when the area aroundwhen area surrounded the Chorleywood station witnessed some development works. The railway was built in 1909The railways were introduced in 1909 and it ranwent across the station area and formed the ground for a wider development and constructions between 1922 and 1970, at the end of whichend of which the motorway was established in this village. The village went through rapid developments between 1970 and 1994 and had a wider roadway at this time. It is worth noticing that development and constructions in Chorleywood were guided by the transportation facilities as the junction areas witnessed a faster and large-scale progress than other areas. The park and the Golf course are in the middle of the village and train, road and motorways formed a grid-like transport networkhash (#) like road system in Chorleywood.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response presents a clear overview of Chorleywood’s expansion and successfully links the fastest development to the growth of transport routes. However, it misplaces the earliest settlement around the station, gives limited coverage of the four distinct periods, and sometimes obscures relationships through overloaded sentences and awkward map vocabulary. The priority is to describe each development zone accurately by period and transport feature in shorter, clearly separated sentences.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The response captures the main pattern that development expanded more rapidly after 1970 and was connected to transport routes. It is less accurate about the earliest development near the station, because the station and railway were built later, and it gives only limited detail about the four development periods.
Describe each shaded period in relation to the main road, railway, and motorway, and avoid implying the station area existed in the 19th century.
Coherence and Cohesion
There is a clear overview and mostly logical progression from early to later development. Some sentences are long and overloaded, which makes relationships between transport and expansion harder to follow.
Use separate sentences for the early settlement, railway-era growth, and motorway-era expansion.
Lexical Resource
The response uses relevant map vocabulary, but development works, wider roadway, and hash like road system are awkward for a formal map report.
Use natural map terms such as development, settlement, transport routes, railway line, motorway, and road network.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Grammar is generally understandable but contains article errors, comparative errors, and awkward clause structures.
Revise comparatives and time expressions, especially much more rapidly, from 1970 to 1994, and the area around.
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
Chorleywood is a village near London whose population has increased steadily since the middle of the nineteenth century. The map below shows the development of the village.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.