brodidit for students
Home / IELTS / Writing / Task 1
How workers travel to work
IELTS Writing task 1 (Academic). Write at least 150 words in about 20 minutes.
The chart below shows the percentage of workers in one city who travelled to work by different methods in 1990 and 2020. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
0 words (minimum 150) · 20:00
How to plan it
- Paragraph 1: say what the chart shows (one sentence).
- Paragraph 2: overview, the main change and the groups that rose or fell, with no detailed numbers.
- Paragraph 3: the figures for 1990, with the highest and the lowest.
- Paragraph 4: the figures for 2020, with the biggest changes.
Show a model answer (154 words)
The bar chart compares the percentage of workers in one city who travelled to work by five methods in 1990 and in 2020.
Overall, the car became even more popular, while the bus and walking both declined. Train travel and cycling rose, but they remained much less common than the car.
In 1990 the car was already the most common method, at 45 per cent, followed by the bus at 25 per cent. Train travel and walking were used by similar shares, at 12 per cent each, and only 6 per cent of workers cycled.
By 2020 the share of car users had risen to 58 per cent, while the bus share had fallen to 14 per cent, which is just over half of its earlier level. Walking fell from 12 to 5 per cent. In contrast, train travel increased slightly to 14 per cent, and cycling rose by half to 9 per cent.
Why it works
- The overview names the car as the biggest winner and the bus and walking as the losers, without numbers.
- Phrases such as just over half and rose by half turn a change into a comparison that the reader can see at once.
- Each figure in the model matches the chart: for example, 6 to 9 per cent is an increase of half.