The bar chart below shows employment figures in different tourism-related industries between 2009 and 2019.
Sample Response
The chart provides a breakdown of employment in a number of tourism-related industries over a ten-year period. Overall, the chart showswe can see that the total employmenttotal level of employment increased by about twenty per cent during the period. However, there was some variation in the figures for the individual sectors. For example, while the travel industry increased its workforce substantially over the decade, there was relatively little growth in employment in hotels and other tourist accommodationthat associated with hotels and other tourist accommodation.
Travel represented the largest proportional increasebiggest area of expansion, having almost doubled its number of employees by 2019. The food industry also saw a significant increase, from 283,000 employees in 2009 to 357,000 in 2019, while the sports industry recorded a somewhat smaller increaseenjoyed an almost equal level of growth. The only sector to declineleast successful sector was culture, including museums and art galleries, where the figures actually fell slightly over the period.
The data suggests that, despite minor fluctuations in the various sectors, employment in the tourism industry as a whole grew over the period shownwill continue to grow.
Why this response received Band 8.0
The response presents a clear, accurate overview and selects useful comparisons, with particularly strong control of the figures for travel, food, sport, culture, and accommodation. Its main limitation is the unsupported prediction that employment will continue to grow, since the chart only reports two historical years. Prioritise ending with a factual comparison drawn directly from the chart and, where space permits, include a few more exact values.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The response gives a clear overview and accurately identifies the total rise and the contrasting changes across all five sectors.
Replace the unsupported future prediction with another precise historical comparison from the two bars.
Coherence and Cohesion
Information progresses smoothly from the overview to logically selected sector comparisons, with cohesive devices used naturally.
Avoid a separate one-sentence conclusion when the opening overview already fulfils that function.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is varied and precise, including effective terms such as workforce, expansion, fluctuations, and sector.
Prefer direct phrasing over occasional awkward expressions such as employment associated with hotels.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A wide range of complex sentence structures is handled accurately, and errors are rare and non-impeding.
Maintain this control while simplifying occasional elliptical structures to make comparisons even more direct.
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The bar chart below shows employment figures in different tourism-related industries between 2009 and 2019.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.