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 the sources of electricity in a country in 1990 and 2020.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Write at least 150 words.
| Category | 1990 | 2020 |
|---|---|---|
| Coal | 48% | 12% |
| Gas | 20% | 36% |
| Nuclear | 27% | 20% |
| Renewables | 5% | 32% |
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 the sources of electricity in one country in 1990 and 2020.
Overall, the country moved away from coal and towards renewable sources and gas. Coal was the dominant source in 1990, but by 2020 it had become the smallest of the four.
In 1990 almost half of the electricity, 48%, came from coal, followed by nuclear power with 27% and gas with 20%. Renewable sources supplied only 5%. Thirty years later the picture was very different. Coal had dropped to just 12%, a quarter of its earlier share, and nuclear power also declined, to 20%.
Gas and renewables increased their shares dramatically. Gas rose from 20% to 36% and became the single largest source in 2020. The growth of renewables was even more striking, as their contribution climbed from 5% to 32%, more than six times as much as before. By 2020 gas and renewables together provided 68% of the country's electricity, compared with only 25% in 1990.
In contrast, coal and nuclear together fell from 75% to 32%.
| Phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| electricity sources | ways of generating power |
| renewables | power from wind, solar and similar |
| sixfold increase | growth to six times |
| the main source | the biggest provider |
| fall from X to Y | decrease between figures |
| be replaced by | give way to |
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