The graphs below show the numbers of male and female workers in 1975 and 1995 in several employment sectors of the Republic of Freedonia.
Sample Response
The given bar charts illustrate the numbers employedemployment status of Freedonian women and men in different sectors in 1975 and two decades later in 1995. The x-axis presents the number of workersworking people in thousands while the y-axis presents six sectors of employment.
The public sector is the greatest employment opportunity provider in both the fiscal years, providing job to almost 850,000 people with little change in the composition of male and female workers, where, more than 75% of women constituted its workforce. Jobs in manufacturing and finance/banking sector are fairly steady at around 600,000 and 450,000 respectively during both the years.
However, the composition of the workforce in finance/banking sector changed with almost all the women employees displaced more than half of the men workforce during 1995. Employment in wholesale and retail tradeWholesale and retail trade industry's workforce grew from about 1.25 million to 1.5 milliongrew slightly in 1995 but the gender balance reversedthe composition of workforce reversed during the later year with women overtaking men as their number rose from about 550,000 to 800,000men displacing more than two-thirds of women workforce. The communications sectorCommunication sector employed substantially more peopletwice the number of employees in 1995; however,in the later year however all of the increase came from womenit had hired a lot of men employees, causing women to outnumber men in the sectorlevelling the male-female ratio of workers in its industry. The defence sectorDefense, however, employed roughly the same total numberhad contracted its opportunities but the number of women doubled from about 50,000 to 100,000it had increased the number of women workforce by more than half of its workforce from a very low base in 1975which was quite negligible in 1975.
Why this response received Band 5.5
The response attempts to compare all six sectors and uses paragraphs to separate the introduction from sector details. However, its central interpretations frequently contradict the graphs, including the direction of gender changes in wholesale, communications, finance, and defence, while several sentences are difficult to parse. The priority is to rebuild the report from direct male-versus-female figures for each year before drawing conclusions.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The report addresses both years and mentions every sector, but most key comparisons are inaccurate or reversed and there is no reliable overview of the major gender changes.
Extract the male and female values sector by sector, then summarise only visually supported patterns such as women’s gains in communications, finance, wholesale, and defence.
Coherence and Cohesion
Paragraphing provides a basic structure, but long overloaded sentences and unclear logical links make several comparisons hard to follow.
Group stable sectors separately from sectors with major gender shifts and express one comparison per sentence.
Lexical Resource
The response attempts varied employment vocabulary, but frequent miscollocations such as ‘contracted its opportunities’ and repeated misuse of ‘displaced’ make meanings imprecise.
Use neutral reporting verbs such as ‘rose’, ‘fell’, ‘remained stable’, ‘overtook’, and ‘employed’ to describe the plotted changes.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Some complex structures are attempted, but frequent article, agreement, possessive, clause, and punctuation errors regularly strain readability.
Shorten multi-clause sentences and check that each clause has a clear subject, correctly formed verb, and unambiguous comparison.
Write this task while it is fresh
Try the same task now. It helps you remember the feedback and write better next time.
IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The graphs below show the numbers of male and female workers in 1975 and 1995 in several employment sectors of the Republic of Freedonia.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.