IELTS Task 1 Bar Chart Tutorial
Bar charts compare categories. The best answers find the story in the bars: which changed most, which overtook which, and which stayed at the bottom.
About the figures on this page
Every figure, place and diagram on this page is invented by RCF English for practice. Nothing here describes a real country, town or dataset, and it must not be quoted as fact. The language you learn is exactly what real Task 1 questions need.
The task
You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.
The chart below shows the percentage of households owning selected items in one country in 2005 and 2020.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Write at least 150 words.
Step by step: how to answer this task
Spend the first five minutes on steps 1 to 3. Candidates who start writing straight away usually miss the overview.
Understand what the visual shows (1 minute)
- What is measured? The percentage of households that owned each item, so the highest possible value is 100.
- What is compared? Five items, each in two years.
- What time? 2005 and 2020, both past: use the past simple, and the past perfect for by 2020... had overtaken.
Find the key features (2 minutes)
Ask what a person would notice from across the room. These become your overview and your body paragraphs.
- Direction: every item was owned by more households in 2020.
- Change of order: the mobile phone went from third place to first, overtaking the television.
- Two kinds of biggest change: the mobile phone rose most in percentage points (70); the computer rose most in proportion (more than five times).
- The bottom: the car was the least owned item in both years.
Plan four paragraphs (2 minutes)
- Introduction: paraphrase the task.
- Overview: all items up; the mobile phone moves to the top; the car stays at the bottom.
- Body 1: the most common items (mobile phone and television) and how their order changed.
- Body 2: the refrigerator, computer and car, grouped by how they grew.
Write, then check (15 minutes)
- Write about 170 to 190 words. Under 150 is penalised.
- Start the overview with Overall so the examiner can find it.
- Support each point with one or two figures, not every figure.
- Leave three minutes to check tense, articles, prepositions and units.
Writing the introduction: paraphrase the question
Change the words, not the meaning. Language copied from the question is not counted in your word total.
| In the question | In your introduction |
|---|---|
| The chart below shows | The bar chart compares |
| the percentage of households | the proportion of homes |
| owning selected items | that had each of five possessions |
| in 2005 and 2020 | in two years fifteen years apart, 2005 and 2020 |
The language of comparison, with examples from this chart
| Purpose | Language | Example from this chart |
|---|---|---|
| Ranking | the most common, the second most common, followed by | In 2005 the television was the most common item, followed by the refrigerator. |
| Overtaking | overtook, surpassed, moved ahead of | By 2020 the mobile phone had overtaken the television. |
| Multiples | doubled, tripled, rose more than fivefold | Computer ownership rose more than fivefold, from 8 to 45 per cent. |
| Differences | X percentage points higher than | In 2020, mobile phone ownership was seven percentage points higher than television ownership. |
| Two figures at once | respectively | The refrigerator and the computer reached 72 and 45 per cent respectively. |
| Contrast | whereas, while, by contrast | Almost all homes had a mobile phone by 2020, whereas only 14 per cent owned a car. |
Model answer
Read it once for meaning, then again to see how each paragraph does its job.
Question: The chart below shows the percentage of households owning selected items in one country in 2005 and 2020. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
The bar chart compares the proportion of households owning five different items in 2005 and in 2020.
Overall, ownership of every item rose over the fifteen years. The most striking change was in mobile phones, which went from the third most common item to the most common of all, while cars remained by far the least widely owned in both years.
In 2005 the television was the item most households possessed, at 60 per cent, followed by the refrigerator at 30 per cent and the mobile phone at 25 per cent. By 2020 this order had changed completely: 95 per cent of households owned a mobile phone, overtaking the television, which had itself risen to 88 per cent.
The refrigerator and the computer both more than doubled, reaching 72 and 45 per cent respectively, with the computer showing the largest proportional increase of any item, from a very low base of 8 per cent. Car ownership grew least, from 5 to 14 per cent, and remained a minority in 2020.
Why this answer works
- It finds the story, not just the numbers. The mobile phone overtaking the television is what a reader notices first, so it belongs in the overview.
- **It separates two kinds of biggest.** The mobile phone rose most in percentage points; the computer rose most in proportion. Noticing that is a Band 7 skill.
- **It uses respectively correctly:** two items in one order, two figures in the same order.
- It groups. Items are handled in sensible pairs, not one sentence each in the order they are drawn.
- It closes the comparison it opened. Cars appear in the overview and again at the end.
From Band 5 to Band 7: sentences compared
Each weak sentence below shows a common type of mistake. The Band 7 version says the same thing accurately.
| Band 5 sentence | The problem | Band 7 version |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile phone 25% and 95%, television 60% and 88%, refrigerator 30% and 72%. | A copy of the chart in words. No comparison and no trend. | Mobile phone ownership soared from 25 to 95 per cent, overtaking the television. |
| The percentage of computers increased. | Computers do not have a percentage; households do. | The percentage of households with a computer increased. |
| Car increased 9 percent. | Missing by, and a change between two percentages is measured in percentage points. | Car ownership rose by nine percentage points. |
| In 2020 people are richer so they buy more things. | An opinion and a reason, neither shown on the chart. | Ownership of every item was higher in 2020 than in 2005. |
Common mistakes with bar chart tasks
Do
- Say which bar is highest and lowest, and whether that changed
- Group items that changed in a similar way
- Use percentage points for the difference between two percentages
- Use comparatives and superlatives accurately: more widely owned, the least common
- Mention an item that overtakes another: examiners look for it
Avoid
- Describe the bars from left to right just because they are drawn that way
- Write the percentage of cars when you mean the percentage of households with a car
- Mix up doubled (twice as many) and increased by 2 per cent
- Use respectively when the items and figures are not in the same order
- Describe every bar with its own sentence
Your turn: a new task to try
Now write your own answer before you look at the model. Set a timer for 20 minutes.
The task: The chart below shows the number of international students, in thousands, enrolled in four subject areas at universities in one country in 2010, 2015 and 2020. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words.
Check your answer
1. The key features you should have found
Your overview should contain the most important of these.
- Engineering, medicine and information technology all grew; business hardly changed.
- Engineering overtook business to become the largest subject in 2020.
- Information technology grew fastest: from 9,000 to 33,000, almost four times as many.
- Information technology overtook medicine by 2015 and was close behind business by 2020.
2. Model answer (170 words)
The bar chart shows the number of international students, in thousands, enrolled in four subject areas at universities in one country in 2010, 2015 and 2020.
Overall, enrolments grew considerably in engineering, medicine and information technology, whereas numbers in business changed little. Information technology showed the most dramatic growth, while engineering replaced business as the most popular subject by the end of the period.
In 2010, business was the leading subject, with 35,000 international students, compared with 22,000 in engineering. Business numbers rose slightly to 38,000 in 2015 before falling back to 36,000 in 2020. Engineering, meanwhile, grew steadily to 41,000, overtaking business to become the largest field.
Medicine and information technology attracted the fewest students in 2010, at 12,000 and 9,000 respectively. Medicine grew gradually, to 19,000 in 2020, but information technology expanded rapidly, doubling to 18,000 in 2015 and then reaching 33,000, almost four times its original figure. As a result, it moved well ahead of medicine and was close behind business by the end of the period.
3. Mark your own answer
Answer yes or no to each question. Every no is a place to improve.
- Did you paraphrase the question rather than copy it?
- Is there a separate overview paragraph starting with Overall?
- Does the overview give the main features without figures?
- Did you select the important figures instead of listing them all?
- Did you compare, using words such as whereas, while and by contrast?
- Is every tense right for the dates shown?
- Did you avoid giving reasons and opinions?
- Did you write at least 150 words?
More Task 1 tutorials
Line graph
Change over time: trends, peaks and sudden falls.
Pie charts
Shares of a whole, and how they change.
Table
Many figures: select, group and compare.
Process diagram
Stages in order, in the passive voice.
Maps
What has changed in a place, and where.
Task 1 overview and language
The overview, the four-paragraph structure, tenses and the grammar of change.