IELTS Line Graph Sample Answer: The Overview Sentence That Decides Your Band

A line graph answer is usually decided by one sentence. Not the introduction, and not the paragraph full of numbers. The overview, which is the sentence that says what the whole graph is doing.

Most candidates write something there. Very few write something that earns the mark. This post takes one line graph and writes four different overviews for it, ranked from weakest to strongest, and explains what each one is missing.

The band labels used here are illustrative teaching labels, not a mark from a qualified examiner. Use them to see the distance between the four versions, not as a certified score.

The graph we are answering

Task 1. The line graph below shows the number of passengers, in millions, using three modes of transport in one country between 1995 and 2020. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

Three lines, four points each. Before reading on, cover the page and try to say in one sentence what happened. That sentence is your overview.

Overview 1: the empty one

Overall, the graph shows that the number of passengers changed a lot over the period.

This is the most common overview in the exam, and it reports nothing. Every graph changes. A sentence that would be true of any line graph ever drawn tells the reader nothing about this one.

Task Achievement, the first of the four public band descriptors for Task 1, asks whether you selected and reported the main features. This selects nothing. An answer whose overview is empty struggles to move past band 5 for that criterion, however clean the grammar is.

Overview 2: the data dump

Overall, rail rose from 40 million to 62 million, bus fell from 55 million to 28 million, and air rose from 12 million to 41 million.

This one is accurate and it is still not an overview. It repeats the numbers that belong in the body paragraphs, and it stops before doing the one job the sentence exists to do, which is to say what the numbers mean together.

There is a simple test. If your overview contains four or more figures, you have written a body sentence and put it in the wrong place.

Overview 3: the honest attempt

Overall, rail and air passenger numbers both grew over the period, while bus use fell steadily throughout.

Now we have a real pattern. Two groups, one rising and one falling, stated without figures. This is a working overview and it would satisfy the basic requirement.

What it misses is scale and turning points. Air travel did not simply grow. It started as the least used mode by a wide margin and ended close to the most used, which is the most striking thing on the page. The sentence treats it as equivalent to rail, and it is not.

Overview 4: the one that earns the mark

Overall, air travel showed by far the most dramatic change, climbing from the least used of the three modes in 1995 to overtake bus travel and come close to rail. Rail rose slowly but without interruption and became the most used mode from around 2005, while bus travel fell in every period from first place to last. Air was the only mode to lose passengers in the final five years.

Two sentences, no figures, and every main feature is covered: the biggest mover, the crossover, the steady riser, the steady faller, and the single break in the pattern at the end.

What separates the four

The column that matters most is the second one. Ranking the changes is what turns a description into a comparison, and the task asks you to compare.

The full answer, built on overview 4

The line graph compares passenger numbers for rail, bus and air travel in one country across a twenty five year period.

Overall, air travel showed by far the most dramatic change, climbing from the least used of the three modes in 1995 to overtake bus travel and come close to rail. Rail rose slowly but without interruption and became the most used mode from around 2005, while bus travel fell in every period from first place to last. Air was the only mode to lose passengers in the final five years.

Air travel began at just 12 million passengers, roughly a fifth of the bus figure. It then rose sharply, doubling to 25 million by 2005 and reaching 48 million in 2015, at which point it had passed bus travel and stood only 10 million behind rail. Between 2015 and 2020 it fell to 41 million, the only decline anywhere on the graph.

Rail followed a gentler path, moving from 40 million to 62 million. Bus travel began as the most used mode at 55 million but moved in the opposite direction, dropping to 28 million by 2020. The two crossed shortly before 2005, after which rail led for the rest of the period.

182 words.

How to write the overview in ninety seconds

Ask three questions in this order, and write down the answer to each in a few words.

1. Which line moved the most? That is your first clause. Superlatives such as "by far the most" and "the steepest" belong here.
2. Do the lines fall into groups? Rising together, falling together, flat. If two behave alike, join them in one clause with "while" or "whereas".
3. Does anything break the pattern? A crossover, a peak, a reversal at the end. One clause is enough.

Join the answers with "Overall" at the front. That is the whole method, and it works on every line graph.

Two habits that hold line graph answers back

Reporting left to right. The graph is drawn in time order, so candidates report every point in time order and never compare the lines to each other. Group by behaviour instead, then move through time inside each group.

Using three verbs. "Increase", "decrease" and "remain stable" cover the exam, but repeating them eleven times costs Lexical Resource marks. Vary the strength: climb, edge up, surge, level off, dip, slide, halve. Vary the form too, since a noun works as well as a verb. "A sharp rise in air travel" and "air travel rose sharply" say the same thing with different grammar, and using both shows range.

Try this today

Take the table above and write only the overview, nothing else, with a two minute timer running. Then check it against the four questions in overview 4: biggest mover, groups, turning point, no figures.

When you have written a full answer, you can paste it into Bandly for an estimated band on each of the four criteria along with the sentences behind each judgement, which is quicker than trying to judge your own overview by eye.