IELTS Academic Writing Task 1/ Graph Writing – Column Graph:

» You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.

The diagram below shows the average hours of unpaid work per week done by people in different categories. (Unpaid work refers to such activities as childcare in the home, housework and gardening.)

Describe the information presented below, comparing results for men and women in the categories shown. Suggest reasons for what you see.

» You should write at least 150 words.

Model Answer 1:
The graph shows data between married men and women of the number of hours spent per week on unpaid work. At first glance at the chart, it is noticeable that from all the three categories (without children, with 1-2 children and with 3 or more children), married women spend more hours involved in unpaid work such as housework, gardening and childcare than expected from men.

Married women with children spend more time than without children as the chart shows while having more than three children have invested around 60 hours of unpaid work. This is probably due to the extra load of housework and childcare that is evidently needed to run such a big family.

Furthermore, though there are visible variations of the number of hours of unpaid work carried out by married women, there is no significant variation among all three categories for married men in terms of work hours that are not paid (30 or fewer hours). In fact, it is observed that married men with three or more children spent slightly less number of unpaid work hours. This might be due to the high requirement of commitment needed for a paid job to meet financial requirements for a big family.

In conclusion, married women with three or more children spent the highest number of hours, yet married women from all categories spent a dramatically higher number of hours for unpaid work than married men.

[Written by – Menu Anju ]

Model Answer 2:
The given column graph elucidates the unpaid work done by both married men and women having different numbers of children. A cursory glance is adequate to mention that most women, with or without children, have to do the unpaid household works more than men and more children mean more work for women.

As is seen in the given illustration, married females who do not have any child do around  30 hours of unpaid work weekly, while,  male from the same category do only 18 hours of such work. Whilst, men who have one or two children spend an equal amount of time for household works as do the males without children, this is in contrast nearly fifty hours for women. In the case of women, who nurture more than three offspring, spend the highest hours on unpaid works -58 hours per week. Men on the other hand, surprisingly do fewer household works with the increase of their child number.

[Word count = 152, Written by – Arora]

Sample Answer 3:
The given column graph shows information on the duration of unpaid works done by men and women of different categories.

As is presented in the illustration, married women who don’t have children do the unpaid-works (gardening, child care and household works) 30 hours per week whereas married men do the similar unpaid jobs for about 18 hours per week. Women, who have one or two children do such work for 50 hours/week but the men from the same category do only 17hours (approximately) each week. The women who have more than 3 kids seem to work the highest amount of unpaid works per week and that is nearly 60 hours. Surprisingly male from the same category work even less; amounting only 16 hours (approximately) of unpaid works.

In summary, women do the most of the unpaid jobs compared to men and with the increased number of children this workload for women increases.

(Approximately 152 words)  This model answer can be followed as an example of a very good answer. However, please note that this is just one example out of many possible approaches.