The bar chart gives information about the percentage of the population living in urban areas in different parts of the world.
Sample Response
The bar chart shows the percentage of the population living in six different regions of the world in three different years. In 1950, North America had 64 per cent of its population living in urban areas64 per cent of people living in the cities, reaching 87 per cent by 2030reaching 90 per cent by 2050, makingmakes it the highest proportion among the regionsthe highest percentage of population compared to other areas. By contrast, Africa had 15 per cent of citizens living in urban areas in 1950, the lowest proportion among the regions shownwhich is the lowest percentage compared to the other regions of the world; however, it is projected to show the greatest increasehad the greatest change from 1950 to 2050, roughly quadrupling from 15 per cent to 62 per centquadrupled from 15 per cent to 62 per cent. Moreover, Asia also is projected to follow a similar upward pattern to Africahad similar pattern of changes as Africa, increasing from 17 per cent in 1950 to 54 per cent in 2030from 17 per cent in 1950 to 66 per cent in 2050. By contrastOn contrary, Oceania has the smallest percentage-point increasethe least changes of percentage from 1950 to 20302050; the difference is only 14 per cent. Moreover, the percentage of people livingpeople who lived in Latin America and the CaribbeanLatin America and Caribbean is projected to doublehas doubled from around 40 per cent to 80 per cent over the period shownover a century. In, it is clear that the percentage of population in urban areas in six parts of the world has increased over a hundred year. However, these percentages change at different ratesat the different rates across the six regionsfor each city.
Why this response received Band 5.5
The response is organised around regional comparisons and communicates a broad upward trend, but its reporting is seriously undermined by reading the chart as ending in 2050 rather than 2030, giving several incorrect endpoint figures, inventing Oceania, and omitting Europe. The highest priority is to verify every year, category, and value against the visual before writing, then reserve the overview for accurate global patterns.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The response identifies the general upward pattern, but major misreadings of the years, regions, and endpoint values make much of the detail inaccurate.
Use 1950, 2007, and 2030, include Europe, remove the invented Oceania comparison, and check every reported figure against the chart.
Coherence and Cohesion
The regional sequence is broadly understandable, but the single-paragraph presentation and repetitive or faulty linking weaken progression.
Place a clear overview after the introduction and group the regions into two comparative detail paragraphs using fewer, more accurate connectors.
Lexical Resource
The vocabulary is sufficient to describe change and comparison, though several collocations and labels are imprecise or incorrectly formed.
Use accurate chart language such as regions, a similar pattern, by contrast, and the smallest increase.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A mix of sentence forms is attempted, but frequent errors in clauses, articles, agreement, and verb forms reduce fluency and sometimes obscure relationships.
Focus on building complete comparison sentences and checking that participle clauses, subjects, and main verbs agree logically and grammatically.
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The bar chart gives information about the percentage of the population living in urban areas in different parts of the world.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.