IELTS Writing Practice Test 32 (Task 1) and Sample Answers
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Contents
The pie charts below give information about the household expenditure of an average US family in different years.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Sample Answer
The pie charts compare the expenses of an average American household in 1970 and 2004. The most significant change that can be seen was in the proportion that went towards paying the mortgage, and the other increase was in the outlay for childcare.
In 1970, about a quarter of the household income was spent on mortgage payments, whereas by 2004, this doubled to account for half of all expenditure. The 1970 family spent only one percent of income on childcare, while the 2004 family allocated ten times more of the budget.
Expenditure on entertainment remained the same at 13%, but the percentage spent on food halved from 25% to 12%, and 8% less of the total income was taken up by transport costs in 2004 (only 5%). Clothing costs consumed more of the budget in 1970, at 22%, but this fell to only 10% in 2004.
Vocabulary
- The pie charts compare
- The most significant change that can be seen
- Went towards
- About a quarter of
- Doubled to
- Halved from
- Consumed more of the budget
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2 Comments
Oyagbesan Olusegun
Posted on Feb 20, 2022
The pie chats compare the pattern of change in spending on household in a typical US family at two periods of time, 1970 and 2004 respectively.
Overall, while percentage expenditure incurred on food, transport and clothing had decreased over the years, expense on morgage and childcare had experienced increase. Additionally, the proportion of the family earnings on entertainment had remained unchanged.
Regarding the family expenditure that experienced a reduction over the years, while the largest portion of a typical family went on food, accounting for a quarter of total spending in 1970, this reduced by about half in 2004. Likewise, spending on transport and clothing also dropped from 13% and 22% respectively in 1970 to 5% and 10% respectively in 2004 ( almost a half fold reduction).
On the contrast, shopping on morgage and childcare witnessed a disproportionate increase over the 34-years period. While expenditure in morgage rose by about a double fold, spending on clothing increased by ten folds to reach 10% of the average family budget. The percentage total expense on entertainment remained constant at 13% in both year considered.
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Janice Thompson
Posted on Feb 21, 2022
Band score: 5
Take care of spellings.
Concentrate on the usage of articles, prepositions, grammatical numbers.