IELTS Academic Writing Task 1 - Bar Charts
Contents
Bar charts are commonly used in IELTS academic writing task 1 questions.
These might either show changes over time or show a snapshot of something at a given time.
Strategy
If you practise writing bar chart questions using the following strategy, you should have no problem writing a good response quickly in the IELTS exam.
Step 1: Understand the Bar Chart
The first thing you need to do is see what is going on in the bar chart. It can be helpful to take a minute before you write anything and just try to understand the data.
In particular, you need to know:
- Does the graph show changes over time, or at a fixed point in time?
- What do the bars represent?
- What is on the vertical axis? Does it start at zero or a different number? What unit relates to the numbers and are they in thousands or millions? Are they percentages?
- What (if it isn’t time) is on the horizontal axis?
- What has the highest and lowest figures?
Step 2: Write the Introduction
The introduction for any academic task 1 can be made up of:
- paraphrasing the description of the data;
- an overall trend.
Paraphrasing
The first sentence of the introduction is a paraphrased version of the description of the chart provided. The description may look like this:
The chart below shows what UK graduate and postgraduate students who did not go into full-time work did after leaving college in 2008.
We need to take the ideas in this sentence and put it into our own words:
The bar chart provided illustrates the different options that UK students who did not enter full-time employment chose after completing a bachelors’ or higher degree in 2008.
Note the different ways I have used to paraphrase the original sentence:
- the chart –> the bar chart (more specific)
- below –> provided (because it is not on the same paper as my answer)
- shows –> illustrates
- what students did –> the different options students chose
- go into full-time work –> enter full-time employment
- graduate and postgraduate … after leaving college –> after completing a bachelors’ or higher degree
Overall Trend
The overall trend is a bit more tricky than paraphrasing. If the bar chart shows a change over time, we can find an overall trend in the same way as we did for a line graph.
In the below example we do not have a change over time. Instead we have two categories of students – graduates and postgraduates. We can therefore see if they both follow the same trend or a different trend. In this case we can see that a similar proportion of both types of student do voluntary work or become unemployed. However, postgraduate students are more likely to enter part-time employment and less likely to continue studying further.
Step 3: Write the Body
In the body paragraph, you need to give details about the data. This will depend on the exact bar chart that you get. However, the following tips should help.
Treat Changes Over Time as a Line Graph
If you have a changes over time bar chart, you can treat this as we did a line graph. It may help you to draw the lines onto the graph. Then separate the lines into phases and describe these. Remember to describe similar trends together.
Don't Write "the (Colour) Bar"
As with line graphs, don’t write “the red bar”. Refer to what the bars represent (in this case the red bar = postgraduate students). Finding different ways to refer to these category will help you to show your lexical resource.
For example, a postgraduate student is one that is doing a masters’ or doctoral degree, so we could refer to them as “masters’ and doctoral students”. These are also sometimes referred to as “higher degrees”, so we could write “students of higher degrees”. You shouldn’t need that many different ways to refer to each group.
Use (Approximate) Numbers
You do need to use numbers from the bar chart in your report. Unless you know the numbers are integers (whole numbers), you need to use language of approximation to show that the numbers you are quoting are not exact. Such language includes phrases like approximately, just over, almost, etc.
Group Like Data Together
If there is similar data, you can write about these points together. In the above example, there is a slight difference between the number of graduate and postgraduates who did voluntary work or became unemployed and this may be one way to group the data. Alternatively, you might group items which are within a similar range of each other.
Step 4: Write the Conclusion
In the conclusion we are looking for a key comparison. If the bar chart shows changes over time, we can deal with this in the same way as a line graph. In other words we can look at how the order of the different items has changed over time.
As this bar chart is a snapshot, we can compare the highest values. It may be useful to group some of these items together. We could therefore write:
Overall, the majority of students (around 70%) who did not get a full-time job either continued their studies or found part-time work, while less than 30% remained unemployed or in a voluntary role.
Practice Questions
Click here for all IELTS writing task 1 practice questions and sample answers.
Acknowledgement
The line graph used in this post originally appeared in IELTS 10 Cambridge which can be purchased here.
