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 main reasons given for learning English by people in three age groups.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Write at least 150 words.
| Category | Under 25 | 25–40 | Over 40 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Study | 55% | 15% | 5% |
| Career | 25% | 65% | 35% |
| Travel | 15% | 10% | 30% |
| Hobby | 5% | 10% | 30% |
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 compares the main reasons for learning English given by people in three age groups: under 25, 25–40 and over 40.
Overall, the main reason differed sharply by age. Young learners were mainly motivated by study and adults aged 25–40 by their careers, while the oldest group gave a wider range of reasons, with career still the most common.
More than half of the under-25s, 55%, said they were learning English for study, whereas the figure was only 15% among 25–40-year-olds and just 5% among the over-40s. Career was the second most common reason for the youngest group, at 25%, with travel at 15% and hobby at only 5%.
For the 25–40 group, career was overwhelmingly the main motivation, mentioned by 65%. Travel and hobby were each chosen by just 10%.
People over 40 were more evenly spread. Career was again the leading reason, at 35%, but travel and hobby were each given by 30%, much higher than in the other groups. Interestingly, hobby learners were six times as common among the over-40s as among the under-25s.
| Phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| main reason | primary cause |
| cite | give as a reason |
| the majority | most people |
| spread evenly | distributed in a balanced way |
| career advancement | progress at work |
| by contrast | in contrast |
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