Task 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.
The table below shows the results of surveys in 2010 and 2022 in which first-year students in one country were asked to select their two most important reasons for choosing their university.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
| Reason | 2010 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|
| Reputation of the university | 38 | 31 |
| Course content | 45 | 42 |
| Location | 29 | 22 |
| Cost of fees and living | 17 | 41 |
| Career prospects | 33 | 47 |
| Social life | 24 | 12 |
Write at least 150 words.
Task 2
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
In many countries, fewer young people are choosing to learn to drive or to own a car than in previous generations.
What are the causes of this? What measures could be taken to address it?
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: practical and financial reasons (cost, career prospects) became far more important between 2010 and 2022, while every other reason — especially social life — lost ground; course content remained the most or second-most cited reason in both years.
- Identifies cost as the standout change (17% to 41%, more than doubling) and notes the change in ranking: career prospects moved from third to first, and cost from last to third.
- Supports every main feature with accurate figures and makes comparisons between reasons within a year as well as across the two years (e.g. in 2022 cost was cited by more than three times as many students as social life).
- Does not try to explain the shifts (fee increases, graduate unemployment) — the report is descriptive only.
Coherence & Cohesion
- Groups the data logically — rising reasons in one paragraph, falling reasons in another — rather than marching down the six rows in table order.
- Uses referencing ("the latter", "this factor", "the two financial considerations") so that reason names are not repeated in every sentence.
- Cohesive devices signal contrast and ranking where they do work ("whereas", "by contrast", "the only category to") and are not stacked mechanically.
Lexical Resource
- Uses survey-appropriate language: respondents, cited, selected, named X as a reason, the proportion choosing, ranked first/last — not "the number of cost rose".
- Describes change with suitable strength: cost surged/more than doubled; social life halved; course content dipped slightly/remained broadly stable.
- Handles percentage-point changes precisely ("rose by 14 percentage points" rather than "rose by 14%", which would be a different claim).
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
- Controls a range of structures: comparatives and multiples ("almost two and a half times as many"), participle phrases ("Having been the least-cited reason in 2010, cost…"), and complex sentences with "while/although".
- Uses past simple consistently for the two dated surveys, with "by 2022" and "in the earlier survey" handled accurately.
- Punctuates figures correctly and keeps subject–verb agreement with percentage subjects ("41% of respondents were…"); the majority of sentences are error-free.
Task Response
- Answers both questions explicitly and with comparable depth: specific causes (cost of insurance and fuel, urban living and public transport, ride-hailing and delivery apps, environmental attitudes, later financial independence) and specific measures.
- Treats "address it" thoughtfully: a Band 8+ answer usually questions whether the trend needs reversing at all, and may argue that measures should target mobility and access rather than car ownership itself.
- Matches solutions to the causes identified — for example, if cost is a cause, proposing graduated insurance or subsidised lessons; if public transport is a cause, improving rural services — rather than listing unrelated ideas.
- Stays on the topic of young people and driving or car ownership, not a general essay on traffic congestion or pollution.
Coherence & Cohesion
- A clear structure — typically one body paragraph on causes and one on measures, or two paired cause–solution paragraphs — with each paragraph controlled by a topic sentence.
- Ideas are developed, not merely listed: each cause is explained in two or three sentences before the next is introduced.
- Cohesion comes from referencing and logical links ("this shift", "such costs", "in response") rather than a numbered list of points.
Lexical Resource
- Uses precise topic vocabulary: driving licence, premiums, car-sharing, ride-hailing, urbanisation, disposable income, mobility, infrastructure, incentives, deterrent.
- Paraphrases the prompt effectively ("fewer young people are choosing to learn to drive" → "the decline in licence-holding among under-25s").
- Uses less common collocations naturally ("a rite of passage", "prohibitively expensive", "dispense with") without forcing in obscure words.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
- A mix of complex structures under control: causal constructions ("largely because", "a consequence of", "owing to"), conditionals for proposing measures ("If insurers offered…"), and passive voice where appropriate ("could be subsidised").
- Accurate modality in the solutions section ("could", "should", "would be likely to"), reflecting that measures are proposals, not facts.
- Punctuation supports complex sentences; errors are rare and never impede meaning.
Common traps for this specific test
The mistakes most likely to cost marks on these two questions.
Respondents chose two reasons, so the columns sum to well over 100% (186% and 195%). Writing "cost was 41% of students" is fine; writing "41% of the choices" or comparing rows as if they were shares of one whole is a misreading.
Six rows in table order produces a list, not a report. Group the rising reasons (cost, career prospects) and the falling ones (the other four), and comment on the change in ranking.
In 2010 course content led, followed by reputation and career prospects; in 2022 career prospects led, with course content second and cost third. Ranking shifts are a main feature and give you comparisons within each year, not just between years.
Cost rose from 17% to 41%, a rise of 24 percentage points — in relative terms it more than doubled. Saying "increased by 24%" states a different and smaller change. Precision here is a Lexical Resource and Task Achievement issue.
Tuition fees, the job market and the pandemic may all come to mind. Task 1 does not ask why; every sentence spent on causes is a sentence without data.
The question is about why young people are not learning to drive or buying cars. Essays that drift into traffic jams, emissions or the merits of electric cars are off-topic.
If your causes are cost and good public transport, proposing "better driving lessons in schools" does not follow. Examiners reward measures that respond to the problems you have actually described.
The prompt says "measures to address it", which leaves room to argue that the change is partly desirable. Strong answers can propose measures that preserve young people's mobility without necessarily restoring car ownership — but they must still propose measures.