Bar charts: how students get to school
You can write an overview of a bar chart and support it with grouped, compared figures.
At band 7, the Academic Task 1 descriptors say a report "presents a clear overview, the data are appropriately categorised, and main trends or differences are identified".
We take those in order, on a bar chart about how students in one city travelled to school. In the exam you have about 20 minutes and must write at least 150 words.
Warm-up
Report or essay?
One of these sentences does not belong in a Task 1 report. Which one?
Which sentence should you leave out?
How it works
You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.
The chart below shows how secondary school students in one city travelled to school in 2004 and 2024.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Write at least 150 words.
The method
- 1Read the labels before the bars
What is measured, where, and when? Here it is percentages of students, in one city, in two years, so the chart is about change.
- 2Find the main features
Which category is biggest? Which changed most? What stayed the same? Two or three features are enough.
- 3Write the overview
Two sentences with no numbers, giving the big picture. It goes straight after your introduction.
- 4Group the details
Put categories that behaved alike together: here, the ones that fell in one paragraph, and the ones that rose or stayed level in another.
- 5Compare, with figures
Support each point with numbers from the chart and compare them: rose from 15% to 33%, more than doubled.
Four paragraphs
The parts, in order
One sentence saying what the chart is about, in new words.
The main features, with no numbers.
One group of categories, with figures and comparisons.
The other group, the same way.
Watch me do one
I start with the biggest change. Car travel went from 15% to 33%, more than double, and by 2024 it was the most common way to school.
Next, what fell. Walking and cycling both went down. Walking was the most common way in 2004, so my report has to say that too.
Then what barely moved: the bus went from 30 to 31, and the train stayed at 5.
So my overview has no numbers: Over the period, travelling by car became the most common way to get to school, while walking and cycling declined. Bus and train use hardly changed.
The details then fall into two paragraphs by themselves: what fell, and what rose or stayed level.
A model answer
The bar chart shows what percentage of secondary school students in one city walked, cycled or travelled by bus, car or train to school in 2004 and 2024. Overall, travelling by car became the most common way to get to school over the period, while walking and cycling both declined. The proportions of students taking the bus or the train hardly changed. In 2004, walking was the most popular option, at 38%, followed by the bus at 30%. By 2024, the share of students who walked had fallen to 24%, leaving walking in third place. Cycling, which was already much less common, dropped from 12% to 7%, and only the train was less popular at the end of the period. The biggest change was in car travel. Only 15% of students were driven to school in 2004, but this figure more than doubled to 33% in 2024, overtaking both walking and the bus. The bus remained popular, rising slightly from 30% to 31%, while the train was the least common choice in both years, at 5%.
- TaskThe overview: the main changes, with no numbers.
- CoherenceThe paragraph on the categories that fell opens with walking, the most popular way in 2004.
- GrammarThe past perfect, for a change complete by a time in the past.
- VocabularyGives the size of the change without another figure.
- VocabularyShows the new order of the categories without another sentence.
Coloured text shows what the examiner is looking for.
Practice with Elita6 questions
Five questions on this chart, then an overview of your own for a different chart.
Which is the overview?
Choose the sentence that works as an overview.
Which sentence is an overview?
Number or proportion?
The chart shows percentages. Which sentence is correct?
Choose the correct sentence.
The size of a change
Complete the sentence with one word.
Car travel rose from 15% to 33%, which means it more than .
Write no more than 1 word.
Which paragraph?
The details go in two paragraphs: what fell, and what rose or stayed level. Where does this detail go?
Train: 5% of students in both years
A tense to fix
The chart is about the past. Which of these three sentences needs a different tense?
Which sentence contains the error?
An overview of your own
This time the chart is described in words. Write its overview: two sentences, no numbers.
A bar chart shows the average hours of homework per week done by students aged 11, 14 and 17, in 2014 and 2024. Age 11: 3 hours in 2014, 4 in 2024. Age 14: 6 hours, then 5. Age 17: 9 hours, then 12. Write the overview.
0 / 25 words
Set up your learning path at the top of this lesson to get band-specific feedback.
Words to keep
The part of a whole, often as a percentage. The proportion of students who cycled fell to 7%.
Go down, become less. Walking declined over the twenty years.
Go past something to become bigger. Car travel overtook the bus by 2024.
Change very little. The proportion taking the bus hardly changed.
Become more than twice as big. Car travel more than doubled.
Between the first and last dates on the chart. Over the period, the bus stayed popular.
Before you go
Read the labels first: what is measured, where and when.
Write an overview with no numbers: the biggest feature and the main changes.
Group categories that behaved alike, and give figures to support each point.
Write proportion or percentage when the chart shows percentages.
Next: That is the end of Unit 1. Unit 2 is about work, and its first lesson teaches job words and the present perfect.