Task 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.
The pie charts below show how the average household in one country divided its spending across six categories in 1995 and in 2020.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
| 1995 | 2020 | |
|---|---|---|
| Housing | 24 | 33 |
| Food | 22 | 14 |
| Transport | 15 | 16 |
| Leisure | 12 | 17 |
| Utilities | 9 | 6 |
| Other | 18 | 14 |
Write at least 150 words.
Task 2
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
In many countries, an increasing number of medical consultations now take place online, by video call or messaging, rather than face to face in a doctor's surgery or clinic.
Do the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Write at least 250 words.
What a Band 8–9 response must demonstrate
Measured against the four official assessment criteria — specific to this test's two tasks.
Task Achievement
- Gives a clear overview that captures the main shifts: housing became by far the largest category in 2020, food fell from near-equal first to a much smaller share, leisure grew, and transport stayed almost unchanged.
- Selects and groups the six categories into those that grew (housing, leisure, marginally transport) and those that shrank (food, utilities, other), rather than reporting twelve figures in sequence.
- Supports every main feature with accurate figures and uses them to compare (housing 24% → 33%, overtaking food, which dropped from 22% to 14%; the two together still account for roughly half of spending in both years).
- Stays purely descriptive: no explanations about rents, inflation or lifestyle, and no comment on whether the changes are good or bad.
Coherence & Cohesion
- Organises logically — introduction, overview, then one paragraph on the largest categories (housing and food) and one on the remaining four, rather than one paragraph per pie.
- Uses referencing ("the former", "this category", "its share") so that the category names are not repeated in every clause.
- Cohesive devices signal comparison between the two years ("by contrast", "over the same period", "whereas in 1995") and are not stacked mechanically.
Lexical Resource
- Varies the vocabulary of proportion and ranking: accounted for, made up, the largest share, roughly a quarter, just under a third, a sixth, and uses fractions alongside percentages where they are accurate.
- Uses precise change verbs for the scale involved: housing rose markedly; food fell sharply; transport edged up by a single point; utilities shrank.
- Keeps register neutral and academic; no informal phrasing such as "people spent loads on rent".
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
- Controls comparative structures ("more than twice the share of utilities", "almost as much as food had in 1995") and expressions of approximation ("nearly a third", "just over one in ten").
- Uses past simple consistently for both dated years, with "by 2020" and "in 1995" time phrases placed accurately.
- Punctuates figures and percentages correctly, handles relative clauses ("housing, which had been the largest category only narrowly, …"), and the majority of sentences are error-free.
Task Response
- Addresses both advantages and disadvantages of online consultation with real substance — access and convenience for remote or immobile patients, and faster triage, set against missed physical signs, unequal digital access and the erosion of the doctor–patient relationship.
- Reaches a clear verdict on whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, stated in the introduction and sustained; listing both sides without weighing them fails the question.
- Develops points with specific illustration (a skin rash that a camera cannot reliably show; a rural patient saved a three-hour journey; an elderly patient without a smartphone) rather than generalities about "technology in healthcare".
- Engages with the replacing face to face framing — the shift away from in-person examination — not a generic essay on the internet being useful.
Coherence & Cohesion
- A clear four- or five-paragraph structure with one controlling idea per body paragraph; a Band 8+ answer may organise by advantage/disadvantage or by patient group, but the choice is consistent.
- The judgement is built cumulatively — the stronger side is argued with more weight and the conclusion follows from it — rather than appearing as an unconnected final sentence.
- Cohesion is achieved through referencing and logical sequencing, not a linker at the start of every sentence ("Firstly… Secondly… Moreover… Furthermore…").
Lexical Resource
- Uses precise, topic-appropriate vocabulary: telemedicine, remote consultation, triage, physical examination, misdiagnosis, continuity of care, digital divide, waiting times, confidentiality.
- Paraphrases the prompt in the introduction instead of copying it ("take place online rather than face to face" → "are conducted remotely instead of in person").
- Uses less common collocations naturally ("a stop-gap measure", "fall through the cracks", "a second-best option", "free up capacity") without forcing in rare words.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
- A mix of complex structures under control: conditionals ("If a symptom cannot be examined by touch…"), concession ("Although video appointments suit routine follow-ups…"), and relative clauses.
- Accurate handling of modals and hedging for a medical topic ("may be missed", "is likely to", "cannot reliably"), which a balanced judgement requires.
- Punctuation supports complex sentences — commas around subordinate clauses, no comma splices — and errors are rare and never impede meaning.
Common traps for this specific test
The mistakes most likely to cost marks on these two questions.
Writing a paragraph about 1995 and a separate paragraph about 2020 produces two lists and no comparison. The task is to compare: each category should be discussed across both years in the same sentence or pair of sentences.
Transport moved only from 15% to 16%. Candidates who report it as "increased" with the same weight as housing's nine-point rise misjudge the scale; a strong answer singles it out as the category that barely changed.
These are percentages of spending, not sums of money. Food's share fell from 22% to 14%, but households may well have spent more money on food in 2020; the charts simply cannot tell you. Avoid "people spent less on food".
Six categories over two years is twelve figures. Quoting every one of them leaves no room for overview or comparison. Choose the extremes and the notable pairs — housing overtaking food, leisure surpassing both utilities and "other".
"Housing rose because of rent increases" is speculation and earns nothing. Task 1 asks what changed and by how much, not why.
An 'outweigh' question asks for a judgement. Two balanced paragraphs followed by "in conclusion, there are both advantages and disadvantages" leaves the question unanswered and caps Task Response at Band 6.
Convenience is the obvious point; at Band 7+ it must be developed into something specific — who gains, what kind of appointment it suits, and what it frees up for the clinic. Repeating "convenient" in three forms is not development.
Elderly people, those without reliable internet, and patients needing physical examination are central to the disadvantages. Essays that treat every patient as a confident smartphone user with a minor ailment argue only half the question.