The bar chart shows the percentage of households with cars in a European country between 1971 to 2001.
Sample Response
The givenyielded bar chartcharts demonstrate the percentage of households thathow many families owned carslived with the car in a European country from 1971 to 2001.
Overall, it can be clearly seen that no car households were on downwards trend year by year whereas, for other two it was upwards except 1991.
For households without a carFor no car, 45% of households45% households had no car in 1971 which declined by five percentage pointsdeclined slightly 5% by 1981. Inafter a decade, In 2001 it was 30. For one-car householdsFor single-car, in 1971, 35% of households35% proportion of families had one car. In 1981 it rose, and the percentage was 42 later it touched its zenith point on account of 50%, between that three decades period dip was 38% in 1991.
For households with more than two carsFor more than 2 cars, a quartera quarter proportion of households had more than 2 cars, and this percentage grew over the following decade;this percentage grew, after a decade it had about 32%, compared with 40% for households with no car in 1981the same percentage as no car had in 1981. In 1991, it was about 27%In 1991 it had 31%, and in 2001, it reached its highest point at about 37%in 2001 with the highest percentage, it was 36%.
Why this response received Band 5.5
The response’s strongest aspect is that it identifies the broad fall in carless households and general growth in the two car-owning groups, with a recognizable overview and category-based structure. Its main limitation is frequent inaccurate or unclear detail, compounded by awkward word choices and poorly controlled sentence boundaries. The highest priority is to verify every figure against the chart and express each year-to-year comparison in short, grammatically complete sentences.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The response covers all three household groups and gives a relevant overview, but several figures are inaccurate or insufficiently anchored to specific years.
Check each value against the chart, especially the multi-car figures for 1981 and 1991, and report the full four-year pattern consistently.
Coherence and Cohesion
Grouping the details by car-ownership category gives the report an overall progression, although long run-on sentences make relationships hard to follow.
Use one sentence for each major time comparison and connect clauses only when the relationship between years is explicit.
Lexical Resource
Some relevant trend vocabulary is attempted, but frequent collocation and word-choice errors make several descriptions unnatural or unclear.
Prefer accurate phrases such as ‘households without a car,’ ‘fell by five percentage points,’ and ‘reached a peak’ over forced alternatives.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response attempts complex structures, but frequent article, agreement, clause, and punctuation errors reduce clarity.
Write complete sentences with clear subjects and verbs, then check articles, percentage expressions, and comma boundaries.
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The bar chart shows the percentage of households with cars in a European country between 1971 to 2001.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.