The graph below shows the top priorities by business companies in the USA in 2016.
Sample Response
The bar graph shows the priorities set by businesses in the United States in 2016 by company sizebased on their sizes. OverallAs is obvious, small and medium businesses put more emphasis on increasing leads and converting contacts or leads into customersgaining customers while large companies distributed their priorities fairly acrossfairly distributed their priorities on lead generation, customer acquisition, increasing income and achieving return on investment from marketing activitiesproviding ROI to marketing. In detaildetails, small US businessessmall US business companies with 25 or fewer employeesless than 25 employees put equal emphasis on converting contacts or leads into customersconverting contacts to leads and increasing leads. They put 71% priority on both of these aspects as they were more focused on generating leads and turning them into customers. They assigned 33% priority to providing33% of their priority was set to providing Return on Investment (ROI) to marketing actions and 20% on reducing contact, lead or customer acquisition costsdeducting expenses on obtaining new clients. Medium companies, with 26–200 employeeshaving employees 26 - 200, put the greatest emphasishighest emphasise (79%) on increasing leads. Their second priority was converting contacts to customers, 73% priority. Their priority for earning more from existing customer and marketing ROI were equal, 47%. Finally, companies having more than 200 employees, large businesses, placed broadly similar importanceput almost a similar importance on all these aspects except reducing contact, lead or customer acquisition costsreducing lead generation cost which was the least priority by all these companies.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response selects the leading priorities for small and medium firms and supports them with several accurate percentages, while the broad comparison with large firms is relevant. Coverage becomes less complete for the largest-company group, and some category descriptions are imprecise or awkward. Prioritise a fuller comparison across all three company sizes, using the chart’s exact category labels and a few representative figures for large firms.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The response provides a clear overview and accurate key figures for small and medium firms, though the largest firms receive only a general description without supporting values.
Add representative percentages for the largest companies and use the chart’s exact labels when identifying priorities.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response follows a clear small-to-medium-to-large progression, but placing the overview and all details in one paragraph weakens the presentation of grouped information.
Use a separate overview and divide the detailed comparisons into focused paragraphs while retaining the logical company-size sequence.
Lexical Resource
A reasonably broad business vocabulary communicates the comparisons, although repeated use of "priority" and awkward choices such as "deducting expenses" and "a similar importance" limit precision.
Replace awkward paraphrases with precise terms such as "reducing acquisition costs" and vary repeated wording only when the alternative is accurate.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response uses varied sentence structures with generally clear meaning, but errors in articles, agreement, word form, and comparison structures remain noticeable.
Edit complex sentences for article use, plural agreement, and correct forms such as "emphasis" and "similar importance".
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The graph below shows the top priorities by business companies in the USA in 2016.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.