The charts below show the percentage of food budget the average family spent on restaurant meals in different years. The graph shows the number of meals eaten in fast food restaurants and sit-down restaurants.
Sample Response
The illustration demonstrates how people’s tendency to have outside meals augmented between 1970 and 2000 and the ratio of food budget they spent on homemade food and restaurant meals. Generally speaking, people ate a higher number of meals outside over timeoutside meals over the time and their spending on restaurant mealsspending on that increased noticeably. As can be seen, people spentspend one-tenth of their food budget to dine outside in 1970 and had around 40 meals outside the home, of whichoutside the home of which 20 meals were fast-food mealswere taken from fast food shops. In the next decadeNext decade, their proportion spent on home cookingexpenditure ratio on homemade food declined and they spent five percentage points morethey spend 5% more on restaurant mealsfor enjoying meals from a restaurant. In 1980, they ate approximately 60 meals at a bistro of which roughly 35 were fast food meals. Over time, their spending ratioOver the time, their spending ratio on restaurant meals rosesoared and in 2000, they had around 90 fast-food mealsaround 90 fast food meals and 50 sit-down restaurant meals50 sitdown restaurant meals. It is worth noticing that this tendency swelled their food budget for cafeteria meals as they spend half of their food funds to enjoy outside meals.
Why this response received Band 6.0
The response identifies the overall rise in restaurant spending and meal frequency and includes several useful endpoint figures. Its main limitation is incomplete and occasionally inaccurate coverage: 1990 is omitted, the 1980 meal categories are reversed, and some values are only approximate. The highest-priority improvement is to organise the report around all four years and systematically compare fast-food and sit-down meals alongside the budget proportions.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The main upward trends are identified, but omission of 1990 and inaccuracies in the 1980 meal figures make coverage uneven.
Cover all four years and verify each category, especially the 1980 values of about 30 fast-food and 35 sit-down meals.
Coherence and Cohesion
The report follows a broadly chronological sequence, although presenting everything in one paragraph weakens the organisation.
Separate the overview from detailed paragraphs and group the budget and meal data into clear, coordinated comparisons.
Lexical Resource
There is some range in trend vocabulary, but several choices such as augmented, bistro, and cafeteria meals are imprecise or unnatural here.
Use standard chart-reporting terms such as rose, restaurant meals, proportion, and fast-food or sit-down meals consistently.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Meaning remains clear despite recurring tense and agreement errors, particularly shifts between past forms and present-tense spend.
Maintain the past tense consistently and check verb forms in clauses describing what families spent and ate.
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The charts below show the percentage of food budget the average family spent on restaurant meals in different years. The graph shows the number of meals eaten in fast food restaurants and sit-down restaurants.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.