Fast Food Consumption in UK - IELTS English

WRITING: Task 1 Task 1 Writing (Line Graphs) 002

WRITING TASK 1 You should spend about 20 minutes on this task. The graph below gives information about the consumption of fast food (in grams per week), in the UK from 1970 to 1990. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words.

600

Fast Food Consumption in UK

Consumption (grams/week)

500

400

Hamburger

300

Fish & Chips Pizza

200

100

0 1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

Year

SOURCE: modified http://www.scribd.com document

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WRITING: Task 1 Task 1 Writing (Line Graphs) 002

Fast Food Consumption in the UK Sample Answer

i

The graph shows the amount of fast food eaten, (which is) measured in grams per person per weekii, over the two decades between 1970 and 1990. iii

Overall, althoughiv the quantity of pizza eaten declined by around v30%, the massive vi5-fold and vii6-fold increase in the consumption of hamburger and fish and chips, respectively, meant the total amount of fast food consumed more than viiidoubled over the two decades. ix

In detail, sales of hamburger, xwhich in 1970 amounted to 50 g/week, and pizza, xi(which was) measured at about 90 g/week, at that time, xiiexploded over the period to 1990, xiiiwhen hamburger intake was xivalmost 300 g/week and fish and chip consumption reached 500 g/week. xvThis represents an xviexponential rise of 6-times for hamburger and 5-times for fish and chips. xvii

In contrast, pizza consumption dropped most significantly from 1970, xviiiwhen it was 300 g/week, to 1980, xixwhen it amounted to just over 200 g/week. Intake of pizza then stayed relatively steady at this figure until 1990. (166 words) i

Before I begin, I look at the graph and see two lines are going up and one down but that overall there is an increase in total consumption. This is all I need to know to do this essay ii Relative clause or reduced relative clause gives a complex sentence structure (required for Band 6) iii You say “Overall …” or “In brief …” to signal to the examiner you are giving the overview – HE/SHE IS LOOKING FOR IT, don’t make it hard to find iv I am deliberately using “although” because it is going to give me a complex sentence and that is minimum Band 6 v It fell from 300 to about 200, so it fell by 100 out if the 300 it started at or 100/300 = 1/3 = about 30%; you can do this straight off the graph just by looking at the 100 g/w fall against the 300 g/w it started at without doing any mathematics. You could also just stop at “declined” – you DO NOT need data in the overview. vi 5-fold because it started at 90 and rose to 500 and 5 x 90 = 450 so it is a little more than a 5-fold increase but this is English NOT mathematics and it is about right vii 6-fold because it started at 50 and ended at 300 and 6 x 50 = 300 viii The graph is fairly clear and the numbers are easy to add in your head: total consumption in 1970=450 g/week; total consumption in 1990 = 1000 g/week ix You say “In detail…” to tell the examiner this is the delayed description of the important features of the data x It is easy to use a relative clause to insert data into you answers and Band 6 or higher into your Band score



WRITING: Task 1 Task 1 Writing (Line Graphs) 002 xi

Another relative clause to insert data, but now it is getting a bit repetitive and the examiner will definitely NOT be happy if we keep using the same type of sentence structure, so we can mix it up and reduce the relative clause to a participle phrase, that will also get us Band 6 minimum, but now we are showing variety and that is Band 7! xii You can’t use language like “exploded” unless it did, but in fact the rise here is exponential so exploded Is appropriate xiii Another relative clause to insert data but this time we made it come after the year so we can use “when” and that adds some variety xiv We can’t say “intake WAS 300 g/week” because it wasn’t, it “was ALMOST 300 g/week” xv “This” is a reference word; we are referring back to the rises we were just describing in the previous sentence. Good use of referencing is HIGHER than Band 6, I will explain how we know this from the Public Band Descriptors later xvi You have to be quite careful with terms like “exponential rise”; if something doubles every period you are looking at then it is an exponential rise. In this graph the consumption of fish and chips and hamburger are not quite exponential at 1980 (hamburger should have been at 100 g/week and fish and chips should have been at 200 g/week, but by the end of the period an exponential rise would have meant hamburger was at 200 g/week and fish and chips at 400 g/week and both of them were higher than this. The use of “exponential” is actually not entirely correct but it is not too far wrong. If this worries the mathematicians and physicists among you use: “huge”, “massive”, “enormous” instead xvii “In contrast … “ tells the reader I am about to say something the opposite of what I have just said, it immediately gives the reader an idea of what I will say before I say it and helps them understand my writing; this is good COHESION. Cohesion makes writing fit together smoothly and gets a higher Band score; “Overall” and “In detail” also do this. xviii You know what this is now, right? xix Another relative clause used to insert data into the sentence. Are there now too many relative clauses? Maybe. We have used enough to make the quality of our writing clear and we don’t really need this one, if it worries you, it could be replaced with: “to 200 g/week in 1980” – simple and straightforward.

