The bar charts below give information about the railway system in six cities in Europe.
Sample Response
The given two bar graphsgraph illustrate data about route length in kilometreskilometres of route and passengers travelling per year in six different cities (Paris, Stockholm, Lisbon, Rome, Madrid and Berlin) in Europe, with their systems opening between 1863 and 2001in Europe between 1863 to 2001.
Overall, it can be identified that the majority of the train routes are located in Paris, Stockholm, Lisbon and Rome. However, travellers travelled most in Lisbon and Stockholm routes.
It is interesting to note that Paris's system, opened in 1863, has a route length ofin 1863, the length of rail lines in Paris is 394 kilometres and the number of passengers travelling on that route annuallypassengers travelled in that route is 775 million. Similarly, in 1900, the train line in Stockholm (199 kilometres), which is half of the Paris route whereas the number of passengers travelling, rose significantly in this area to 1191 million. In 1927, the railed pathway of Lisbon is 155 kilometres, while the figure of individuals who visited this place jumped to 1927 million.
The railway routerail lane of Rome is 126 kilometres, but the annual passenger total for this system is onlyjourney made by the people in this place is just 144 million. Madrid's railway, opened in 1981, had a route length ofIn 1981, Madrid rail length was merely 11 kilometreskilometre which is the shortest of the sixwhich is negligible and fewer passengerslesser people used this system, attravel in this way is 45 million. Likewise, in 2001, the railway route of Berlinberlin is 28 kilometres28km, and only 50 million passengers travelled on this route.
Why this response received Band 5.5
The response's strongest feature is its inclusion of figures for all six cities, with generally clear paragraphing and an attempt to compare extremes. Its main limitation is that the opening years are repeatedly presented as observation dates, while the overview gives only a vague account of route length. The highest-priority improvement is to interpret each chart category correctly and state the clearest overall contrasts, especially Paris's longest network and Lisbon's highest passenger total.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The response covers both charts and reports most figures accurately, but it misinterprets the opening years and gives an imprecise overview of route-length patterns.
Describe the years as the systems' opening dates and make the overview identify the longest and shortest networks as well as the busiest and least-used systems.
Coherence and Cohesion
The introduction, overview, and two detail paragraphs create a recognizable structure, although progression within several long sentences is weakened by faulty clause connections.
Group cities by clear comparative features and use complete sentences with simpler links between each figure and its comparison.
Lexical Resource
There is enough vocabulary to describe railway data and differences, but frequent awkward choices such as “railed pathway” and “visited this place” reduce precision.
Use consistent data-reporting terms such as “rail network,” “route length,” and “annual passengers” instead of forcing inaccurate synonyms.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A mix of simple and complex forms is attempted, but frequent agreement, tense, article, and sentence-structure errors make several comparisons cumbersome.
Prioritize accurate subject-verb agreement and past-tense reporting, then separate run-on or incomplete comparative clauses into controlled sentences.
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The bar charts below give information about the railway system in six cities in Europe.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.