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 percentage of male and female graduates in five subject areas in one country.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Write at least 150 words.
| Category | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|
| Engineering | 78% | 22% |
| Medicine | 38% | 62% |
| Education | 22% | 78% |
| Business | 52% | 48% |
| Arts | 34% | 66% |
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 percentage of male and female graduates in five subject areas in one country.
Overall, the proportions of men and women differed greatly in most subjects. Engineering was strongly male-dominated, while education and the arts attracted mainly women. Business was the only subject with a close to equal split.
Engineering showed the largest imbalance in favour of men, with 78% of graduates being male and only 22% female. Business was much more balanced, at 52% men and 48% women, meaning that the gap was just 4 percentage points.
In the other three subjects, women formed the majority. Education had the highest proportion of female graduates, at 78%, which mirrored the male share in engineering, and just 22% of its graduates were men. Women also made up 66% of arts graduates, against 34% for men. In medicine, women were again in the majority, at 62%, while men accounted for 38%.
It is notable that the figures for the two sexes always add up to 100%, so each subject's male percentage is the mirror image of the female one.
| Phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| graduates | people who have finished a degree |
| male-dominated | mostly made up of men |
| the majority | more than half |
| evenly balanced | roughly equal |
| account for | make up |
| in the minority | fewer than half |
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