Pick out the main features of this bar chart for your overview, write your report on a 20-minute timer, then compare it with a band-8 model answer.
You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.
The chart below shows the average number of hours worked per week in six countries.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Write at least 150 words.
| Category | Hours per week |
|---|---|
| Mexico | 42 |
| South Korea | 40 |
| Turkey | 39 |
| Japan | 36 |
| France | 34 |
| Germany | 32 |
GoPrep wrote this practice question in the style of the exam. It is not an official IELTS question.
An overview names the main trends or differences in one or two sentences, without numbers. These are the features a strong answer picks out:
Spend the first few minutes planning, then write.
0 words of 150 minimum
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Write your own answer first, then compare: how it answers the exact question, what each paragraph does, and which phrases you could borrow.
The bar chart shows the average number of hours worked per week in six countries.
Overall, there was a gap of 10 hours between the country with the longest working week and the one with the shortest. The countries with the longest hours were Mexico and South Korea, while European countries recorded the lowest figures.
Mexico had the longest working week, at 42 hours, followed closely by South Korea with 40 hours and Turkey with 39 hours. These three countries were therefore all at or near the 40-hour mark, and the difference between the first and the third was just 3 hours.
Working weeks were noticeably shorter in the remaining three countries. Japan was in the middle of the range, at 36 hours, which was 6 hours fewer than in Mexico. France averaged 34 hours per week, and Germany had the shortest working week of all, with only 32 hours, a full 10 hours below the Mexican figure.
It is notable that the figures declined in a regular sequence, with each country working between 1 and 3 hours less than the one before it.
| Phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| working week | hours worked in a week |
| the longest | the highest |
| the shortest | the lowest |
| followed by | next in order |
| hours per week | weekly working hours |
| lie in the middle | be at an intermediate level |
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