The tables below show people’s reasons for giving up smoking, and when they intend to give up.
Sample Response
The two tables together give a snapshot of the reasons people choose to stop smoking and when they intend to give up.
The main reason smokers give for stopping is general healthis for general health (71%), with financial considerations (31%) and the risk of smoking-related diseases (25%) being the next two most popular reasons. One fact to highlight from this table is that almost twice the percentage of heavy smokers cite present health problems as the reason compared to light smokers.
According to the second table, the majority of smokers questioned (71%) intendintended to give up, with light smokers more inclined to stop (79%) than heavy smokers (60%). Thirty-five percent of smokers35% of smokers said they were planning to give up within the next six months and only 12% planned to give up within the next monthsaid they were prepared to try within the following month. Although only 29% of smokers on average were unwilling to give up, heavy smokers were almost twice as unwilling to try as light smokers, which perhaps reflects the level of addiction in the former group.
Why this response received Band 8.0
The response efficiently selects the most important findings from both tables and supports them with accurate percentages and useful smoker-group comparisons. Its main limitation is that the overview is distributed across the detail paragraphs and ends with an unnecessary speculative explanation. The highest-priority improvement is to add one explicit overview summarizing the leading health motive and the broad intention to quit, while keeping interpretation strictly data-based.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
Key findings from both tables are accurately selected and illustrated with relevant totals and subgroup comparisons.
State the two dominant overall patterns together and omit speculation about addiction that the tables cannot establish.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response is concise and logically organized, with each body paragraph focused on one table and comparisons flowing clearly.
Add a distinct overview after the introduction to make the hierarchy of information immediately apparent.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is varied, natural, and precise for describing reasons, intentions, proportions, and group differences.
Replace slightly interpretive or awkward phrases such as twice as unwilling to try with a direct comparison of the reported percentages.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Complex comparative structures are accurate and well controlled throughout, with consistently clear punctuation and agreement.
Preserve this accuracy while favoring slightly shorter sentence structures when several percentages are presented together.
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 tables below show people’s reasons for giving up smoking, and when they intend to give up.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.