Written by David S. Wills · March 21, 2022
One of the most common ways to prepare for IELTS is to use the Cambridge IELTS book series. These include real IELTS test questions, and this helps you to get a better sense of the real exam and also to gauge your current level. As of now (early 2022), the latest book in the series is Cambridge IELTS 16.
Today, I want to show you two sample answers from the academic portion of this book. You can find other sample answers from Cambridge IELTS 16 here (about building history) and here (about driverless cars).
Task 1
Let’s start with IELTS writing task 1. In Cambridge IELTS 16, there are four task 1 tests, but let’s just look at one of them today. It is a line graph:
First of all, before we look at the sample answer, let’s take a moment to analyse the question. It is actually pretty straightforward. You have two line graphs. The first shows how ownership of three electrical appliances changed over a one-hundred-year period and the second shows how the amount of time spent on household chores changed.
Analysing the data is quite simple. You can see that the ownership of each item increased and the amount of time spent on housework decreased. Thus, the only problem you have is picking the right language to accurately convey that.
Sample Band 9 Answer
The first line graph shows the percentage of households that own three different types of electrical appliance over a period of one hundred years and the second shows the number of hours spent per week on household chores during that same period. Overall, ownership of those three appliances increased and the amount of time spent on chores decreased.
In 1920, which was the first year recorded, almost no one owned a refrigerator, whilst a third of people had a vacuum cleaner and four out of ten had a washing machine. This changed drastically over the next decades, with almost every household possessing a fridge by 1980. Indeed, by 1960 it had already surpassed the other two appliances to become the most commonly owned of the three. In the final year, 2019, every household had both a fridge and vacuum, but washing machines, which had been the most common in 1920, were now the least common with just three quarters of households owning one.
During this time frame, the number of hours spent on chores dropped from fifty hours per week to about ten, with a steep decline in the first few decades, followed by a slower fall from 1980 onwards.
Notes
Importantly, I did not include pointless information, such as the name of each appliance, in my introducti