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 annual salary of primary and secondary school teachers in five countries.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Write at least 150 words.
| Category | Primary | Secondary |
|---|---|---|
| Germany | 66 | 72 |
| UK | 40 | 43 |
| Poland | 22 | 24 |
| Kazakhstan | 9 | 10 |
| Mexico | 19 | 22 |
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 average annual salaries, in thousands of dollars, of primary and secondary school teachers in five countries.
Overall, secondary teachers earned more than primary teachers in every country. Germany paid the most and Kazakhstan the least, with a very wide gap between them.
Germany's teachers were the best paid, with primary teachers earning $66,000 and secondary teachers $72,000, a difference of $6,000. The UK came second, at $40,000 for primary and $43,000 for secondary teachers. The German figures were therefore far higher than those of any other country.
Poland and Mexico had similar and much lower salaries. In Poland, primary teachers earned $22,000 and secondary teachers $24,000, while Mexican teachers received $19,000 and $22,000 respectively. The gap between the two types of teacher was greater in Mexico, at $3,000, than in Poland, at $2,000.
Kazakhstan had the lowest salaries by a long way, at just $9,000 for primary teachers and $10,000 for secondary teachers. A German primary teacher therefore earned more than seven times as much as one in Kazakhstan.
| Phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| annual salary | yearly pay |
| primary teacher | teacher of young children |
| secondary teacher | teacher of older students |
| earn more than | receive higher pay |
| a marginal difference | a very small gap |
| vary hugely | differ greatly |
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