Pick out the main features of this line graph 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 graph below shows the amount of electricity generated from three sources in the UK between 1990 and 2020.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Write at least 150 words.
| Category | Coal | Gas | Wind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | 200 | 2 | 0 |
| 1995 | 130 | 60 | 1 |
| 2000 | 120 | 125 | 1 |
| 2005 | 125 | 150 | 3 |
| 2010 | 110 | 100 | 10 |
| 2015 | 75 | 60 | 40 |
| 2020 | 6 | 125 | 75 |
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 line graph illustrates how much electricity the UK generated from coal, gas and wind between 1990 and 2020, measured in terawatt-hours.
Overall, coal went from being the dominant source to a negligible one, while wind power grew from almost nothing to a significant contributor. Gas rose over the period as a whole, although it fluctuated along the way.
Coal output stood at 200 TWh in 1990 and fell steadily to 120 TWh in 2000. After a small recovery to 125 TWh in 2005, it dropped sharply, reaching just 6 TWh in 2020. Gas followed a very different course. Starting at a mere 2 TWh, it climbed to 125 TWh in 2000 and peaked at 150 TWh in 2005. It then declined to 60 TWh in 2015 before recovering to 125 TWh by the end of the period.
Wind generation was virtually non-existent for the first fifteen years, at no more than 3 TWh in 2005. From 2010 onwards, however, it expanded rapidly, rising from 10 TWh to 40 TWh in 2015 and then to 75 TWh in 2020, which meant that wind output was by then far higher than that of coal.
| Phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| electricity generation | the production of power |
| plummet to | fall dramatically to a very low level |
| reach a peak of | hit the highest point |
| fluctuate | go up and down unpredictably |
| a negligible amount | a tiny, insignificant quantity |
| overtake | become higher than another |
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