The table below gives information about the rail transport in five countries in 2015.
Sample Response
The tabletable data provides statistics on rail transporttransports in five countries including the number of railway passengers, average distance travelled per personaverage distance they crossed and cargo carried on railways in 2015. Overall, China and India had the largest number of railway passengers while Canada's railwaysCanadian railway carried the maximum amount of goods in 2015in the year 2015. Looking at the detailsGetting back to details, China had the largest railway passengers which accounted for 34 million while Indian railway passengers comprised 21 million. Malaysia had roughly 9 million passengers while Canada and the UAE had about 0.9 and 7.5 millionabout 1 and 7.5 million rail commuters respectively in 2015. Despite having the least number of railway passengers, Canada's railwaysCanadian rail authority carried the most cargocarried the highest goods. They carried over 34 billion tons of cargo, which was greatergoods which were higher than the cargocargos carried by China's railwaysChina rail authority (about 28 billion tons). Malaysian, Indian and UAE rail transported approximately 29, 21 and 24 billion cargos in 2015 respectively. ChineseChina rail passengers travelled the greatest average distancecrossed the highest distance on an average which was around 2,180 kilometres22 hundred kilometers and that was approximately 600 km higher than that of average distance travelled by an Indian rail passenger. Canadian passengers travelled the least, 90 km per personless than 100 km per head of its population while rail passengers in Malaysia and the UAEMalaysian and UAE citizens travelled a similar distance on the train.
Why this response received Band 7.0
The response selects the principal features from all three measures and supports them with largely accurate figures and useful comparisons. Its main limitation is language precision, especially inaccurate countability and collocations around passengers and cargo, while the lack of paragraph breaks makes the report visually dense. Prioritise grouping the overview and details into separate paragraphs and using exact measurement nouns and units consistently.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The report gives a clear overview and accurately covers the main passenger, distance, and cargo patterns with relevant comparisons.
Increase precision by stating Malaysia and the UAE's similar average distances numerically and preserving the table's exact measurement labels.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response progresses logically through passenger totals, cargo, and distance, but it lacks paragraph breaks and occasionally uses abrupt transitions.
Place the overview in its own paragraph and group each set of related measures into clearly separated detail paragraphs.
Lexical Resource
A sufficient range of transport and comparison vocabulary is used, though countability and collocation errors reduce accuracy.
Use precise forms such as "number of passengers," "amount of cargo," and "billion tons" rather than "cargos" or "billion cargos."
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Varied complex sentences communicate comparisons clearly, but errors with agreement, articles, reference, and noun phrases recur.
Check comparative clauses and noun heads so constructions such as "the number of passengers was highest" are grammatically complete.
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The table below gives information about the rail transport in five countries in 2015.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.