Task 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.
The graph below shows the average number of hours per week that 16–24-year-olds in one country spent on three leisure activities between 2000 and 2020.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
| 2000 | 2004 | 2008 | 2012 | 2016 | 2020 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Watching television | 17.5 | 16.8 | 15.2 | 12.4 | 9.6 | 7.1 |
| Playing video games | 4.2 | 5.9 | 8.3 | 10.8 | 13.5 | 15.9 |
| Reading for pleasure | 6.4 | 5.7 | 4.6 | 3.5 | 3.1 | 3.8 |
Write at least 150 words.
Task 2
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Some companies now allow their employees to work from anywhere in the world, rather than from a fixed office or even from a fixed country.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of this?
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 crossover: television fell steadily while video games rose steadily, so that by 2020 gaming had overtaken television as the dominant activity — and that reading, the smallest category, declined for most of the period but recovered slightly after 2016.
- Selects the key moments rather than reporting all 18 figures: the starting gap (television 17.5 vs games 4.2), the point where the two lines cross between 2012 and 2016, and reading's low point of 3.1 hours in 2016.
- Supports each main feature with accurate figures and units (hours per week), and uses them to compare — e.g. television lost roughly ten hours while gaming gained almost twelve, so the two changes are close to mirror images.
- Stays purely descriptive: no speculation about smartphones, streaming or school workloads as causes of the changes.
Coherence & Cohesion
- Organises around the data's logic — typically an introduction, an overview, one paragraph on the two large, opposing trends (television and gaming) and one on reading's distinct fall-then-recovery — rather than three paragraphs that each march through one line year by year.
- Uses referencing ("the former", "this activity", "over the same sixteen years") to avoid repeating the three activity names in every sentence.
- Cohesive devices mark genuine relationships ("whereas", "by contrast", "having bottomed out in 2016") and are not stacked mechanically at the start of every sentence.
Lexical Resource
- Uses trend language with the right strength and direction: television declined steadily and then more sharply; gaming rose consistently; reading dipped, levelled off and recovered marginally.
- Varies the vocabulary of time use: hours, time devoted to, time spent on, a weekly average of — without falling back on "increase" and "decrease" throughout.
- Handles the overtaking precisely ("surpassed", "overtook", "exceeded television for the first time") and the small recovery proportionately ("edged up", "a modest rebound"), rather than overstating a 0.7-hour rise as "soared".
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
- Controls a range of structures: comparatives and multiples ("more than four times as many hours as"), participle clauses ("having fallen to 3.1 hours in 2016, reading…"), and complex sentences with "while/whereas".
- Uses past simple consistently for the dated period and handles "by 2020" and "between 2012 and 2016" constructions accurately.
- Writes decimal figures correctly (7.1 hours, not "7,1" or "7.1 hour") and keeps the majority of sentences error-free.
Task Response
- Addresses both advantages and disadvantages with comparable depth, rather than listing three benefits and one token drawback (or vice versa).
- Engages with the specific framing — working from anywhere in the world, including other countries — rather than writing a generic essay about working from home.
- Develops each point with a concrete illustration (e.g. how a team spread across eight time zones actually schedules a meeting; what happens to tax and employment law when a worker lives abroad for a year) instead of generalities about "flexibility" and "communication".
- Makes the writer's overall assessment clear in the conclusion even though the question does not demand an opinion — a strong answer still weighs the two sides rather than stopping at a list.
Coherence & Cohesion
- A clear four- or five-paragraph structure, typically one body paragraph for advantages and one for disadvantages, each with a topic sentence that states its controlling idea.
- Points within each paragraph are sequenced logically — for instance, advantages for the individual before advantages for the employer — so the paragraph has internal shape, not just a sequence of "Another advantage is…" sentences.
- Cohesion relies on referencing and logical sequencing rather than a linker at the start of every sentence.
Lexical Resource
- Uses precise, topic-appropriate vocabulary: distributed teams, asynchronous communication, time-zone overlap, talent pool, retention, tax residency, data security, cohesion, isolation.
- Paraphrases the prompt in the introduction instead of copying it ("work from anywhere in the world" → "perform their jobs from any location, including abroad").
- Uses collocations naturally ("blur the line between", "draw on a global talent pool", "erode team cohesion") without forcing in rare words for their own sake.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
- A mix of complex structures under control: conditionals ("If an employee relocates to a country with weaker data protection…"), concession ("While the savings on office space are real…"), and relative and participle clauses.
- Accurate modal verbs for hedged evaluation ("can", "may well", "is likely to"), which an advantages/disadvantages essay requires.
- Punctuation supports long 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.
Reading for pleasure falls from 6.4 to 3.1 hours and then rises to 3.8 in 2020. It is the only line that changes direction. Describing it simply as "declining throughout" misreads the graph and is the first thing an examiner checks for in this task.
The central feature is that gaming overtook television somewhere between 2012 and 2016. An answer that describes the two lines separately without stating that one surpassed the other has missed the main comparison the question is asking for.
It is tempting to explain the data — smartphones, streaming services, exam pressure. None of this is in the graph. Task 1 is description and comparison only; every sentence of explanation is a sentence that earns nothing.
The unit is hours per week, not a share of leisure time. Writing that television "fell to 7.1%" or that gaming "took a larger proportion" is inaccurate; keep the unit as hours, or as a change in hours.
Reading's recovery is 0.7 hours over four years. Calling it a "dramatic rebound" or saying reading "surged" is a lexical error that also misrepresents the data. Proportionate language ("edged up", "a slight recovery") scores higher.
The prompt is about working from anywhere in the world. Essays that discuss commuting, childcare and home offices without ever touching on time zones, cross-border employment or living abroad have answered a different, easier question.
An advantages/disadvantages essay needs both sides developed. Three well-argued benefits followed by a single sentence conceding "however, there may be some communication problems" caps Task Response at Band 6.
This question asks what the advantages and disadvantages are, not whether one outweighs the other. A brief judgement in the conclusion is fine, but an essay that spends its body arguing for one side and barely describing the other has misread the task type.