The table below gives information on consumer spending on different items in five different countries in 2002.
Sample Response
The supplied table lists the percentages of national consumer spending in fiveseveral countries in 2002. The spending data were dividedThe expenditure was sorted into threedifferent categories.
In general, food/drinks/tobacco were true as the vast majority of consumer expenditure in all observed countries followed by clothing/footwear and leisure/education which came up in the second and third place respectively.
Looking at the details, Turkey, Spain, and Ireland accounted the high majority of national expenditure for meals, beverage and tobacco, 32.14%, 28.91%, and 18.80%, respectively. On the other hand, Italy and Sweden were lower than other countries, only about 16%.
Meanwhile, Turkey also also recorded relatively high proportions of national expenditurecame up roughly in big numbers of national expenditure for clothing/footwear and leisure /education, 6.63% and 4.35%, respectivelyin sequence, although Italy recorded the highest proportion for clothing and footwearamassed the highest expenditure for clothing, 9.00%. In contrast, Sweden recorded the lowest proportion of national spendingSweden was true as the lowest national spent inon the same category, only 5.40%. Yet, for leisure and educationdue to leisure/education, Sweden recorded one of the higher spending sharesSweden reckoned as one of the high national expenditures, 3.22%, behind Turkey, which had the highest figurefollowing Turkey which was the highest figure, 4.35%. However, Spain's figure was roughly half as highSpain halved the figure roughly and had the lowest proportionwas true as the lowest national expenditure, 1.98%.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The report has a clear overview of the category ranking and an effective paragraph structure, and it correctly identifies most high and low values. Its main factual weakness is that Ireland's and Spain's food, drink and tobacco figures are reversed, while frequent unnatural collocations reduce precision; the highest-priority improvement is to check country-value pairings carefully and describe them with straightforward statistical language.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The overview correctly ranks the three spending categories and most extremes are accurate, but the response incorrectly assigns 28.91% to Spain and 18.80% to Ireland.
Verify every country-value pairing against the table, especially reporting Ireland at 28.91% and Spain at 18.80% for food, drink and tobacco.
Coherence and Cohesion
The introduction, overview, and category-focused detail paragraphs create clear progression, although some connectors and comparisons are mechanically or awkwardly linked.
Keep the current paragraph structure but use simpler links that explicitly signal each category and its highest and lowest countries.
Lexical Resource
The response attempts a broad statistical vocabulary, but frequent miscollocations such as "were true as," "amassed," and "national spent" weaken accuracy and naturalness.
Use reliable phrases such as "accounted for," "recorded the highest proportion," and "had the lowest spending share."
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A mix of sentence forms is attempted and meaning remains generally clear, but article, agreement, preposition, and clause errors recur across the report.
Prioritise accurate subject-verb agreement and percentage structures, for example "food, drinks and tobacco accounted for the largest share" and "Turkey recorded 32.14%."
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The table below gives information on consumer spending on different items in five different countries in 2002.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.