Model answer for an IELTS bar chart on USA household income.

Here is a tricky IELTS academic task that I wrote a model answer for from the Cambridge IELTS 18 book. As I mentioned in posts before, always use authentic material such as IELTS Cambridge books or British Council material when practicing because there is a lot of fake IELTS stuff on the internet.

This task was quite difficult to write about as I had to spend longer than usual analysing the bar chart and I needed to plan the report to make it as concise as possible.

Notice that it is dynamic data that changes every 4 years. As well as trends language, you need to make comparisons here.

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The Task

Source: Cambridge IELTS 18 book test 2.

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Model Answer

The chart illustrates the number of US households grouped by their yearly revenue from 2007 to 2015. Overall, annual income increased throughout the timeframe particularly for the wealthiest income bracket, whereas the middle and higher income categories witnessed negligible changes.

In 2007, almost 30 million households earned $100,000 or more, which was double that of the $75,000 – $99,999 bracket (just under 15 million). Following this, the less than $25,000 and $25,000 – $49,999 categories accounted for 25 million and around 26 million households respectively. Moreover, around 21 million had earnings of $50,000 to $74,999.

By 2011, there was a decline in the wealthiest bracket, comprising approximately 27 million households. The less than $25,000 and $25,000 -$49,999 groups both witnessed a rise to just under 30 million. The middle-income bracket saw no changes and the $75,000 -$99,999 category dipped slightly.

The wealthiest households rose considerably to 33 million by 2015, while the two lowest earning categories declined to around 26 million. There was a moderate rise for the second-highest earning households, and the $50,000 to $74,999 group showed no noticeable changes.

179 words

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Analysis

The word count here is 179 words. At first, I was over 195 words and felt it was getting convoluted, so I had to erase parts and make it as concise as possible while still reporting on the key features.

The structure here is a little different as I combined the introduction and overview and there are 3 separate paragraphs for each timeframe.

I have used synonyms for the word ‘income‘ such as ‘revenue‘ and ‘earnings‘ and for the highest earning category I used the word ‘wealthiest‘ . In the $50,000+ category, I use the phrase ‘middle-income bracket’

I repeated the words ‘household‘ about 6 times, this is fine as I couldn’t think of a synonym so I didn’t want to waste time obsessing over repeating a word. I also used ‘bracket‘ a few times and wrote ‘category‘ or ‘group‘ to vary the language.

You can repeat words but try to vary your language as much as possible.

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Any questions? Leave a comment below.