By English Test Coach · Updated
Academic Task 1 · Charts and data
Household spending shares
An original IELTS practice question with a planning route and a sample answer to learn from.
Aim for at least 150 words in about 20 minutes. Suggested practice level: intermediate, not a predicted band.
Your writing task
The pie charts compare how an average household in a town distributed its monthly spending among five categories in 2005 and 2025. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Open full-size diagram (new tab)Read the chart data as a table
These figures belong to the original English Test Coach practice visual. They are fictional teaching data, not measured statistics about real places.
| Category | 2005 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Housing | 30 | 35 |
| Food | 25 | 18 |
| Transport | 15 | 17 |
| Leisure | 10 | 14 |
| Other | 20 | 16 |
| Total share | 100 | 100 |
Each year totals 100%. The charts give shares, not amounts of money: a larger slice does not establish higher actual expenditure. Housing and food together account for 55% in 2005 and 53% in 2025.
How to approach this question
Give an overview of the main patterns and support selected comparisons with accurate figures and units.
Pie charts: compare distributions and changing shares →
Overview selection: housing remains the largest category and takes a greater share in 2025, while food records the largest fall. Do not list every percentage in the overview.
Detail grouping: compare housing and food first because they are the two largest categories in 2005, then group the smaller transport, leisure and other changes. Report percentage-point differences, not changes in the household's unknown total spending.
These are possible directions, not required opinions or facts to memorise. Develop your own response and check every claim against the task.
A possible plan
- Introduction: identify what is shown, including the time period or stages where relevant.
- Overview: select the largest changes, main contrasts or overall process without inventing causes.
- Details 1: group related features and support them with accurate data, locations or stages.
- Details 2: cover the remaining main features and make relevant comparisons. Check units, dates and direction of change.
Vocabulary you can use precisely
Choose language that fits your meaning. You do not need to include every phrase.
- accounted for
- Made up a stated share of a total.
Housing accounted for 35% of household spending in 2025.
- percentage-point fall
- The arithmetic reduction between two percentage shares.
Food recorded a seven-percentage-point fall between the two years.
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