IELTS Writing Task 1 Line Graph
A line graph shows change over time, so your report is about trends: what went up, what went down, what stayed flat, and which lines crossed. You don't need every number. You need the big picture first and the right numbers to prove it.
The overview carries more weight than anything else in the report. If an examiner can't find a sentence that sums up the main trends, Task Achievement is unlikely to go above 5, however accurate the details are.
The graph below shows the average number of hours per week that adults in one country spent on three leisure activities between 2005 and 2025. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words.
- Watching TV
- Social media
- Reading
Data invented for practice.
How to structure it
- 1
Introduction (1 sentence)
Paraphrase the task: what the graph shows, who, where, when. Don't copy the prompt word for word.
- 2
Overview (2 sentences)
The two or three biggest trends, with no numbers. Here: TV fell, social media rose sharply and overtook it, reading declined slightly.
- 3
Body 1
The two lines that tell the main story (TV and social media), with start and end figures and the point where they crossed.
- 4
Body 2
The remaining line (reading), compared with the others.
The line graph illustrates how many hours a week adults in one country devoted to watching television, using social media and reading over a twenty-year period from 2005.
Overall, television viewing declined steadily while time on social media rose dramatically, overtaking TV by the end of the period. Reading time fell slightly and was the least popular of the three activities from 2015 onwards.
In 2005, adults watched an average of 16 hours of television a week, far more than they spent on social media, at just one hour. Over the following two decades, TV viewing fell consistently, reaching 9 hours in 2025. Social media followed the opposite path: it climbed to 8 hours by 2015 and continued to grow, overtaking television shortly before 2020 and finishing at 14 hours, fourteen times its original level.
Reading, by contrast, changed relatively little. It began at 6 hours, dipped gradually to 4.5 hours in 2020 and then levelled off. Although it was the second most common activity in 2005, by the end of the period it lagged well behind both screen-based pastimes.
Why it scores Band 8: A clear overview with no numbers, accurate data selection, a precise description of the crossover, and varied trend language (declined steadily, climbed, overtaking, dipped, levelled off). 180 words.
Band is our estimate against the public IELTS Writing band descriptors.
Language that does the work
- rose / climbed / increased dramatically
- For strong upward trends.
- fell / declined / dropped steadily
- For downward trends; "steadily" or "gradually" for slow change.
- levelled off / remained stable at
- When a line flattens out.
- overtook / surpassed
- When one line crosses another.
- peaked at / reached a low of
- For highest and lowest points.
- by contrast / whereas / while
- To compare lines in the same sentence.
Mistakes that cost marks
- No overview, or an overview full of numbers. Trends only, two sentences.
- Describing every point on every line. Select the start, end, peaks and crossings.
- Giving reasons ("because people prefer phones"). Task 1 reports data, it doesn't explain it.
Practise it: 13 Cambridge tests with a Task 1 like this
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