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 tourists spent their money in a coastal city in 2005 and 2022.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Write at least 150 words.
| Category | 2005 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|
| Accommodation | 38% | 30% |
| Food | 24% | 26% |
| Shopping | 20% | 12% |
| Activities | 8% | 22% |
| Transport | 10% | 10% |
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 tourists spent their money in a coastal city in 2005 and 2022.
Overall, accommodation remained the largest item of expenditure, though its share fell, while spending on activities grew considerably at the expense of shopping.
In 2005 accommodation accounted for 38% of tourist spending, followed by food with 24% and shopping with 20%. By 2022 the share spent on accommodation had dropped to 30%, but it was still the largest category. Food rose slightly, from 24% to 26%, and became the second-largest item.
The most striking changes concerned shopping and activities. Shopping fell from 20% to 12%, while activities almost tripled, from 8% to 22%, making them the third-largest category in 2022 instead of the smallest.
Transport was the only category to remain unchanged, at 10% in both years.
Accommodation and shopping together accounted for 58% of spending in 2005 but only 42% in 2022, whereas food and activities together rose from 32% to 48% over the same period, a change of 16 percentage points in each case.
| Phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| tourist spending | money visitors spend |
| accommodation | places to stay |
| remain the largest | stay the biggest |
| shift towards | move in the direction of |
| stay constant | not change |
| drop from X to Y | fall between figures |
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