The table below gives information on consumer spending on different items in five different countries in 2002.
Sample Response
The given table illustrates the consumercustomer expenditure on three spending categories in five countriesgoods in five countries in 2002in the year 2002. Overall,It is clearly shown that the highest expenditure category was on Food/ Drink/ Tobacco, and Turkey had the highest spending shares overallhighest amount of spending among the five countries.
With regard to the consumer spending on food, drinks and tobaccoconsumer spending on food category, Ireland ranked second to TurkeyIreland came after Turkey with 28.91%. In contrast, Sweden had the lowestleast percentage of expenditure on food, drinks and tobaccoexpenditure on food category, which was 15.77%. By contrastOn the other side, Italy recorded the highest figure in the categorydominated the category of clothing and footwear with total spending of 9%, was by other countries such as Spain, Ireland and Sweden’s spending were 6.15%, 6.43% and 5.4% respectively.
Furthermore, the expenditure on leisure and education was the lowest of the three categoriesthe least among all the categories with only 1.98%1.985 in Spain and Turkey recordedin Turkey that was 4.35%. The other countries, such asOther countries like Sweden and Italy had very similar spending shares ofpercentages of spending with 3.22% and 3.20% respectively.
In summary, Turkey made more expenses for the given items in 2002 while expenditures in foods/ drinks and tobacco were more than on other given items.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response provides a clear overall pattern and selects useful comparisons across all three categories, with most figures accurate. Its main weakness is control: one clothing figure is transposed, Ireland is omitted from leisure and education, and several sentences—especially the clothing comparison—are grammatically tangled; prioritise verifying every percentage and expressing each country comparison in a complete, clean sentence.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The main spending pattern is identified and relevant figures from all categories are compared, although Spain's clothing value is inaccurate and some supporting data are omitted.
Check each percentage against the table, correct Spain's clothing figure to 6.51%, and include Ireland when summarising leisure and education.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response is organised by spending category with a clear introduction and summary, but some transitions are mechanical and one long comparison disrupts progression.
Give each category a sequence of short country comparisons instead of combining several figures in one overloaded sentence.
Lexical Resource
The vocabulary is adequate for describing expenditure, but recurring collocational problems such as "customer expenditure," "came after," and "made more expenses" reduce precision.
Use standard reporting phrases such as "consumer expenditure," "ranked second," and "spent the highest proportion."
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A mixture of sentence forms is attempted, but frequent agreement, clause, possessive, and preposition errors sometimes make comparisons difficult to follow.
Build each data sentence around one clear subject and verb, then check agreement and comparative structures before adding further countries.
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The table below gives information on consumer spending on different items in five different countries in 2002.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.