Pick out the main features of this pie 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 pie charts below show how a technology company divided its annual budget between departments in 2015 and 2023.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Write at least 150 words.
| Category | 2015 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|
| R&D | 18% | 30% |
| Marketing | 22% | 16% |
| Salaries | 40% | 35% |
| Operations | 15% | 14% |
| Other | 5% | 5% |
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 pie charts compare how a technology company divided its annual budget between five departments in 2015 and 2023.
Overall, the company shifted money towards research and development, mainly at the expense of marketing and salaries. Salaries remained the largest item in both years.
In 2015 salaries took up 40% of the budget, followed by marketing with 22%, research and development with 18% and operations with 15%. By 2023 salaries had fallen to 35%, but they still represented the largest category.
The most significant change was the growth of research and development, which rose from 18% to 30%, so that it overtook marketing and became the second-largest item. Marketing, by contrast, dropped from 22% to 16%, a decrease of 6 percentage points.
The other two categories were broadly stable. Operations slipped by just 1 percentage point, from 15% to 14%, while the other category was unchanged at 5%. Research and development therefore increased by 12 percentage points, which was larger than the combined fall in marketing and salaries, at 11 points.
| Phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| annual budget | yearly money plan |
| allocate | assign money to |
| R&D | research and development |
| the largest item | the biggest expense |
| remain virtually unchanged | barely change |
| divide between | split among |
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