IELTS Task 1 Sample Answers Across Six Chart Types

Reading one Task 1 sample answer teaches you one chart. Academic Task 1 can give you six different kinds of visual, and the chart family changes how you group your paragraphs and which verbs you need.

This page walks through all six. For four of them there is a full answer in our sample library with a band estimate for each of the four criteria, so you can see not only what a good answer looks like but which sentence in it cost marks. The other two families are covered by their own guides.

One thing to keep in mind while reading the numbers below. Every band on this page comes from Bandly's own scoring engine, which produces estimates. No qualified examiner has marked these answers. Read them as a guide to what the descriptors reward, not as a verdict.

What all six have in common

Whatever the visual, the instruction is nearly always the same: "Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words."

That gives every answer the same four part shape.

1. Introduction. One sentence paraphrasing the prompt. Change the nouns and the verb, keep the meaning.
2. Overview. One or two sentences naming the biggest pattern, with no individual figures. This is the most reliable half band in the task and the thing most answers leave out.
3. Body paragraph one. The first group of detail, with figures.
4. Body paragraph two. The second group, with figures and comparisons.

What changes between chart families is how you split those two body paragraphs. That is the whole difference, and it is worth more than any vocabulary list.

1. Line graph

A line graph shows change over time. Split your body paragraphs by direction of movement: lines that rose in one, lines that fell in the other.

The library answer on average household electricity use in four countries opens like this.

The line graph illustrates the average household electricity use in Australia, Canada, Germany and India over a twenty-year period from 2000 to 2020. Overall, Canada consistently had the highest household electricity consumption, while India recorded the lowest despite a steady rise.

The introduction paraphrases, the overview names the highest and the lowest without quoting a number, and the grouping is by trend. Bandly estimated Task Response 8, Coherence and Cohesion 6, Lexical Resource 6, Grammatical Range and Accuracy 7, giving an overall 7.

The criterion that held it back was Coherence and Cohesion, and the reason is visible in the prose: "Similarly", "In contrast" and "Meanwhile" each start a sentence, which reads as a list of linked facts rather than a connected description. The last sentence, "while the figures for India shows a significant percentage increase", attaches a comparison to a clause that does not support it. Linking words are not cohesion. Cohesion is the reader never having to work out what refers to what.

2. Bar chart

A bar chart usually compares categories rather than time. Split by size, or by group, not by the order the bars happen to sit in.

The library answer on commuter transport in three cities scored highest of the four, with an overall estimate of 7.5.

Overall, there are stark contrasts in commuting preferences among the three urban areas. Tokyo is heavily dominated by train travel, Amsterdam shows a strong preference for cycling, and Houston is overwhelmingly reliant on cars, while bus travel remains relatively unpopular in all three locations.

That is a complete overview in two sentences. It names the pattern for each city and the one fact true of all three, and it contains no figures at all. Notice also what it does not do: it does not announce "This essay will describe". Copy this shape for any chart with three or four categories.

3. Table

A table is the family most candidates handle worst, because it invites you to read every cell aloud. You cannot. Select.

The library answer on household recycling rates in five countries came back at overall 7, with Lexical Resource the weakest at 6. The reason was word formation rather than vocabulary range: "the table compare", "all the five country", "a significant rise of 15 percents". None of those is a hard word. They are the small agreement and countability slips that sit between band 6 and band 7 on Lexical Resource, and they are fixable in a week of proofreading practice.

For a table, group by rows that behave alike. Countries that rose sharply in one paragraph, countries that barely moved in the other. There is a longer treatment at Task 1 table questions.

4. Process diagram

A process has no numbers and no comparisons, so the language changes completely. You need sequence markers and the passive voice.

The library answer on the municipal water treatment process reached an overall estimate of 7.5, with Task Response 9 and Lexical Resource 6.

Overall, it is clear that the water undergoes a series of physical and chemical treatments, starting from a natural reservoir and ending with covered storage before distribution.

For a process, the overview states how many stages there are and where the process starts and ends. That is it. The body then follows the stages in order: "raw water is piped", "it is pumped", "the water flows into", "the water is directed to". Almost every verb is passive, because the subject of a process is the material, not the operator.

What cost marks here was spelling and form: "floculation" for flocculation, "coagulant chemical" for coagulant chemicals, "On the first stage" for in the first stage. Technical words copied from the diagram must be copied exactly. See process diagrams for the full answer structure.

5. Pie chart

There is no pie chart answer in the library yet. The grouping rule is simple: describe the largest one or two segments first, then group the small ones together rather than listing each.

An overview for a pair of pie charts showing household spending in 1990 and 2020 might read:

Overall, housing was the largest single expense in both years, while the share spent on food fell markedly and the share spent on leisure and technology grew.

With two pie charts you are being asked about change, so the overview must compare the two, not describe them one at a time. The worked version is at pie chart sample answers.

6. Map

Maps show a place at two points in time, or one place with a proposed change. Group by area, not by feature, and use compass directions and passive constructions.

Overall, the village changed from a largely agricultural settlement into a residential area, with the farmland in the north replaced by housing and a new road built along the eastern edge.

Three verbs carry most map answers: was replaced by, was converted into, was constructed. Full guide at describing maps.

The four estimates side by side

Two patterns are worth taking away. First, the first criterion is the easiest to satisfy, because it rewards having an overview and reporting the right features, and all four answers do that. Second, the criterion separating 7 from 7.5 in this group was never ideas; it was Lexical Resource and Coherence and Cohesion, held down by word form slips and mechanical linking.

That should change how you revise. Most candidates at band 6.5 spend their time hunting for more impressive vocabulary when the marks are sitting in plural agreement, prepositions after nouns, and not starting three sentences in a row with a linking word.

What to do today

Pick the chart family you have practised least, almost certainly the process diagram or the map, and write only the introduction and the overview. Three sentences, fifteen minutes.

Then write one complete answer under time and put it into Bandly, which returns an estimated band for each criterion together with the sentences behind each estimate. The bands are model estimates rather than marked results, so treat the quoted sentences as the useful part: they show you which lines a marker would stop at.