Task
The chart below shows the number of households in the US by their annual income in 2007, 2011, and 2015.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Candidate’s Answer
This is an answer written by a candidate who achieved a Band 5.5 score.
The graph illustrates the data of different levels of annual wage of families in the united states in 2007, 2011, and 2015.
As far as the number of families whose annual income was less than $25,000, it began with around >5 million in 2007, then increased to approximately 27 million in 2011, but decreased by 2 million 4 years later. Similarly, those of families that earned $25,000 to $49,999 were about 25 million in 2007, after that it rose to nearly 30 million in 2011. Finally, it decreased to around 27 million in 2015.
By contrast, the groups of families which have high income, including $75,000 to $99,999 and $100,000 or more, experienced a drop in 2011, but their data went up in 2015.
Interesting things could be seen in the group of middle income, the data remain the same in 2007, 2011, and 2015.
Examiner’s Comment
This response does present most of the data within the bar chart and the key features required.
To improve the response, an overview of the information should be included, for example: Across the 8 years, households with incomes below $50,000 rose, then fell back slightly, households with incomes of over $75,000 fell slightly then increased and those with the mid-level incomes remained the same.
The information is arranged coherently, starting with the details for the lower-income households, then the higher, then the mid-section. There are some effective cohesive devices [As far as | Similarly | By contrast].
The vocabulary is suitable for the task, but there is an error [>5 million / 25 million] which is not helpful when reporting the details.
There is a mix of simple and complex structures, with sentences that contain multiple clauses. There are some examples of missing capitalisation [united states / United States] with some errors [remain / remained].
To improve the response, it is important to re-read to check for small errors with vocabulary and to include an overview or summary of the salient information.
