Pie charts: how adults divided their exercise time
You can compare two pie charts through their largest shares and biggest changes, in the language of proportions.
Two pie charts, twenty years apart, show how adults in one country divided up their weekly exercise time. The task is to compare them.
The overview is one place where band 6 and band 7 differ. At band 6, a relevant overview is attempted. At band 7, the report presents a clear overview. With two pie charts, a clear overview names the biggest slices and the biggest changes.
Warm-up
What does a slice show?
A pie chart of weekly exercise time has a slice labelled Walking: 30%.
Which sentence describes that slice correctly?
How it works
You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.
The pie charts below show how adults in one country divided their weekly exercise time between five activities in 2005 and 2025.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Write at least 150 words.
The two charts that go with this task are drawn below it.
Reading two pie charts
- 1Check what the whole is
Here the whole is adults' weekly exercise time, so every slice is a share of time. Each chart adds up to 100%.
- 2Find the biggest slice in each chart
Walking in 2005, the gym in 2025. When the top slice changes, that change belongs in the overview.
- 3Find the biggest changes
Go slice by slice across the two charts: which grew, which shrank, which stayed about the same.
- 4Group the slices
Slices that grew go together, and slices that shrank go together. A slice that barely moved can sit with either group.
- 5Write shares as shares
made up, accounted for, a quarter, a fifth, the proportion of time. Words for counting people do not fit a chart of time.
Percentages as fractions
Watch me do one
First the biggest slices. In 2005 it's walking, at 30%. In 2025 it's the gym, at 32%, so the top place changed hands. That goes in my overview.
Next, slice by slice. The gym went from 15% to 32%, more than double. Cycling rose too, from 10% to 18%.
Team sports fell from 25% to 12%, and swimming from 20% to 10%. Both lost about half their share.
Walking hardly moved, from 30% to 28%. It was the largest slice in 2005 and the second largest in 2025.
So I have two groups: the gym and cycling grew, while team sports and swimming shrank. Walking barely moved, so it can go in the paragraph with the gym, which overtook it.
My overview: The gym replaced walking as the largest share, while team sports and swimming both lost about half of theirs.
A model answer
The charts compare the share of weekly exercise time that adults in one country spent on each of five activities in 2005 and 2025. Overall, the gym replaced walking as the activity that took up the largest share of exercise time, and cycling also grew. Team sports and swimming, by contrast, both accounted for a much smaller proportion in 2025, while walking changed very little. The biggest rise was for the gym, which accounted for only 15% of exercise time in 2005. By 2025, its share had more than doubled to 32%, making it the largest category. Cycling, the smallest share in 2005 at 10%, also grew, to 18%. Walking, meanwhile, slipped only slightly, from 30% to 28%, which left it in second place, just four percentage points behind the gym. The shares of the other two activities fell sharply. In 2005, team sports made up a quarter of the time adults spent exercising, and swimming a fifth. Over the next twenty years, the proportion given to team sports fell by more than half, to 12%, while swimming's share halved to 10%.
- TaskThe overview starts with the change at the top, and gives no figures.
- TaskThe main falls grouped in one sentence, with the slice that stayed level.
- GrammarThe past perfect after By 2025, for a change that was complete by then.
- CoherenceThe second detail paragraph names its group at once: the two slices that shrank. The first held the slices that grew, with walking beside the gym that overtook it.
- VocabularyFractions in place of two more percentages. Swimming a fifth leaves out the verb, because the reader already has it.
- VocabularyThe proportion given to keeps the sentence about a share of time.
Coloured text shows what the examiner is looking for.
Practice with Elita6 questions
Five questions on these charts, then an overview of your own for two new ones.
Which is the overview?
Choose the sentence that works as an overview of the two charts.
Which sentence is an overview?
The size of a fall
Complete the sentence with one word.
Team sports fell from 25% to 12% of exercise time, a fall of more than .
Write no more than 1 word.
A fraction for a percentage
Swimming made up 20% of exercise time in 2005. Complete the sentence with one word.
In 2005, swimming took up a of adults' exercise time.
Write no more than 1 word.
Which group?
You are grouping slices for your detail paragraphs: slices that grew a lot, slices that shrank a lot, and slices that stayed about the same.
Walking: 30% in 2005, 28% in 2025
Find the mistake
One of these sentences breaks a rule you met in the lesson on amounts. Choose it.
Which sentence contains the error?
An overview of your own
Here are two new pie charts, described in words. Write their overview: two sentences, with no figures.
Two pie charts show how office workers at one company usually spent their lunch break, in 2015 and 2025. 2015: ate at their desk 40%, ate in a café 30%, went for a walk 20%, went to the gym 10%. 2025: ate at their desk 55%, ate in a café 20%, went for a walk 10%, went to the gym 15%. 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
Be a particular part of a total. Walking accounted for 30% of exercise time in 2005.
Form a part of a whole. Team sports made up a quarter of the total.
A part of a whole, often given as a percentage. The gym's share of exercise time more than doubled.
Used to show a difference from what came before. The gym grew. By contrast, swimming lost half its share.
Fall to half the size. Swimming's share halved between 2005 and 2025.
Stay nearly the same. Walking remained almost unchanged at 28%.
Before you go
Check what the whole is before you write. Here it was exercise time, so every slice was a share of time.
Put the biggest slice in each year, and the biggest changes, in your overview, with no figures.
Group the slices that grew and the slices that shrank, and give the figures in the detail paragraphs.
Use share words: made up, accounted for, a quarter, the proportion of time.
Next: Unit 5 ends here. Unit 6 moves to cities, starting with words for places and the way they change.