IELTS writing task 1: Australian school leavers' activities

activities of students in antipodes

The charts show the Australian school leavers did immediately after leaving secondary school. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

My report:

"The pie charts compare three activities that Australian students pursued right after they left their secondary schools in the three years 1980, 1990 and 2000.

It is clear that pursuing further education and working were the two main choices for Australian students in all the three mentioned years. The number of unemployed students remained insignificant during this period.

In 1980, half of the school leavers decided higher academic pursuit to be their first preference, but this choice became less attractive in the following years with 38% and 37% continuing their further studies in 1990 and 2000, respectively. By contrast, only 40% of students graduated from secondary schools took a job right away in 1980 but this proportion increased to 50% in 1990 to become the most popular choice for students leaving secondary school and reached to a peak of 55% in the last year.

Meanwhile, the number of students being unemployed after school fluctuated slightly. Only 10% of the total graduates failed to gain employment in 1980. Although this saw a rise to 12% in 1990, it fell to 8% in the last year of the period shown."

Please feel free to comment...

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Sarah, your overview is incomplete. You need to mention the three activities that the students did in particular and what the trend was over the 3 decades that was noted in the pie chart. You also need to complete the outline / summary discussion by mentioning what the instructions for the comparison and reporting section of the prompt are. It would have been better if you did not separate the trending information so that you could have maintained the complete paragraph requirement of at least 3 sentences in the opening paragraph. This is a required outline portion that is meant to show the examiner that you can easily understand an English discussion topic and that you have the ability to follow English instructions.

Now, in regards to the number of unemployed students, it is alright for you to say that it is insignificant, but, as per the pie chart, there were actual percentages involved and these should have been mentioned because the information is vital to the analysis process. There is no need to enclose your report in quotation marks. Why did you do that? The essay does not include any dialogue as in a creative writing or narrative essay with character exchanges. Don't make that a habit. It will adversely affect your GRA score in terms of proper sentence development.

@Holt
I have just revised the report as you advised. My latest one:

The pie charts compare three activities that Australian students pursued right after they left their secondary schools in the three years 1980, 1990 and 2000.
It is clear that pursuing further education and working were the two main choices for Australian students while unemployment played a minor part in all the three mentioned years mentioned. Working after finishing school was the only option for them that increased in popularity during the period.

Among the three destinations, the number of unemployed students was the least at only 10% of the total graduates in 1980. Although this saw an increase to 12% in 1990, it fell back to 8% in 2000. Meanwhile, continuing higher education and taking a job took turns in order of being the most popular option for school leavers.

In detail, half of all students leaving secondary school decided higher academic pursuit to be their first preference in 1980 but this choice became less attractive in the following years with 38% and 37% continuing their further studies in 1990 and 2000, respectively. By contrast, only 40% of students graduating from secondary schools took a job right away in 1980 but this proportion increased to 50% in 1990 and reached a peak of 55% in the final year.

Please feel free to comment...

Many thanks to everyone.