The charts below give information about USA marriage and divorce rates between 1970 and 2000, and the marital status of adult Americans in two of the years.
Sample Response
The bar graphs show information about marriage and divorce ratesrate in the USA from 1970 to 2000of USA from 1970 to 2000 and also illustrate the marital-status distributionillustrate marital status in 1970 and 2000in two years 1970 and 2000. In the first chart,According to the first bar graph, as it can be seen clearly, initially number of marriages in the USAmarriage rate of USA was 2.5 million in the year 1970 and remained unchanged in 1980which remained constant after one decade and then declined slightly to about 2.4 million in 1990started receding slightly afterwards. The number of marriagestotal marriage rate in the USA fell toremained exactly 2 million in the year 2000 Deleterespectively. By contrastOn contrary, as is observed from the bar chart, in 1970, the number of divorcesin 1970 divorce rate was one million which rosemagnified to 1.4 million after a decade before falling to about 1.1 million in 1990but again dropping trend can be seen. And finally, the number of divorces felldivorce rate slumped to one million which was its initial state. On the other hand, as is presented in another bar graph, in 1970 total adult people were married by 70% while 15 % never got married. Widowed and divorced status remained just under 10% in 1970 which dropped to 3% approximately in the year 2000. Divorce status increased but remained under 10% but very close to 10%.
Why this response received Band 6.0
The response communicates the broad marriage and divorce trends and uses some relevant figures, with an understandable progression between the two charts. Its main limitation is incomplete and partly inaccurate coverage of marital status, compounded by the absence of a clear overall summary. The highest priority is to state the major trends across both charts first, then verify every category and comparison against the visuals.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The main time-series trends are partly described, but the response lacks a clear overview and misreports or omits important marital-status data.
Add an explicit overview of both charts and check every marital-status change against the visual before selecting details.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response follows a broadly understandable chart-by-chart sequence, although progression is weakened by awkward linking and dense presentation.
Organise the report into an overview and separate detail paragraphs, using simple logical transitions between comparisons.
Lexical Resource
There is enough vocabulary to describe trends and proportions, but several collocations are unnatural or imprecise.
Use conventional data-reporting verbs and accurate noun phrases instead of exaggerated or nonstandard trend language.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A mix of sentence structures conveys the main meaning, though recurring article, preposition, agreement, and clause-control errors reduce accuracy.
Prioritise complete, well-punctuated sentences and check articles and prepositions in statistical descriptions.
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The charts below give information about USA marriage and divorce rates between 1970 and 2000, and the marital status of adult Americans in two of the years.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.