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 daily household water use for six activities in one city.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Write at least 150 words.
| Category | Litres per day |
|---|---|
| Showering | 120 |
| Toilet | 95 |
| Laundry | 60 |
| Cooking | 25 |
| Cleaning | 30 |
| Garden | 70 |
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
Your answer stays on this page only. Copy it before you leave.
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 daily water use of a household in one city for six activities, in litres.
Overall, showering and toilet flushing were by far the largest uses of water, while cooking required the least. Garden watering and laundry fell in the middle of the range.
Showering accounted for the highest volume, at 120 litres per day, followed by the toilet with 95 litres. Together, these two activities used 215 litres, which was more than the other four categories combined, at 185 litres. Showering alone used almost five times as much water as cooking.
Garden watering and laundry came next. Households used 70 litres per day on the garden and 60 litres on laundry, so these two activities used roughly 60% as much as showering and the toilet combined.
Cleaning and cooking were the least water-intensive activities. Cleaning used 30 litres per day, while cooking required only 25 litres, the lowest figure in the chart. The difference between the largest and smallest categories was 95 litres per day.
| Phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| household water use | water used in homes |
| litres per day | daily volume |
| account for | make up |
| the biggest user | the largest consumer |
| followed by | next in order |
| the least | the smallest amount |
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