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 what students chose to eat for lunch at one school in 2008 and 2023.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Write at least 150 words.
| Category | 2008 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|
| Hot meal | 30% | 22% |
| Sandwich | 28% | 25% |
| Salad | 5% | 18% |
| Snacks | 22% | 8% |
| Packed lunch | 15% | 27% |
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 what students chose to eat for lunch at one school in 2008 and 2023.
Overall, packed lunches and salads became more popular, while snacks and, to a lesser extent, hot meals and sandwiches declined. The most popular choice therefore changed over the fifteen years.
In 2008 hot meals were the most popular choice, at 30%, closely followed by sandwiches at 28%. Snacks accounted for 22% of choices, packed lunches for 15% and salads for only 5%. By 2023 hot meals had fallen to 22% and sandwiches to 25%, and the order of the leading categories had changed.
Packed lunches showed the largest rise, from 15% to 27%, which made them the most popular option in 2023. Salads also grew dramatically, from 5% to 18%, more than three times their previous share.
The biggest decrease was in snacks, which dropped from 22% to only 8%. This was the smallest share of any category in 2023. Overall, the healthier or home-prepared choices of salads and packed lunches rose from 20% to 45% of the total.
| Phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| lunch choices | what students pick to eat |
| move away from | become less used |
| packed lunch | food brought from home |
| fall sharply | decrease quickly |
| more than triple | become over three times |
| the most popular | chosen by the most |
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