Introduction to IELTS Writing Task 1 Pie Charts
A pie chart shows how a total is divided. In IELTS, your job is to explain the main proportions, compare categories and describe changes when different dates are shown.
This IELTS Writing Task 1 pie chart sample takes you from reading the figures to writing a complete report. Start by looking for the biggest slices and the clearest differences. Those observations will give your answer a direction before you write the first sentence.
For an introduction to the other question types, see our IELTS Writing Task 1 guide.
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The pie-chart task
Practice question
The pie charts show how total household expenditure in one country was divided among six categories in 2005 and 2025. Write a report describing the main features and comparing the figures where relevant.
Write at least 150 words and spend about 20 minutes on your report, following the official IELTS Academic Writing guidance.
These charts use original practice data created for this lesson.
How to analyse the data
Before writing, check what each whole circle represents. Here, each chart shows 100% of household expenditure, and the slices show how that total was divided.
Next, check the dates. Both years are in the past, so use forms such as accounted for, rose and fell. For charts comparing two groups in the same year, compare their shares without inventing a change over time.
Then follow each category across the charts. Housing goes from 30% to 40%, while food moves from 25% to 15%. Leisure stays at 10% in both years.
Be careful: these are percentages, not cash amounts. A smaller food share does not prove that households spent less money on food. Total spending could have changed too, and the charts do not give us that information.
Selecting key features
Ask yourself: what would someone need to know if they could not see the charts?
For this task, the clearest features are:
- Housing has the largest share in both years.
- Housing rises and food falls by the same number of percentage points.
- Transport overtakes food to become the second-largest category in 2025.
- Clothing’s share halves, while leisure and other spending have unchanged shares.
Your overview should summarise the main pattern. Save the detailed percentages for the body paragraphs, where they can support specific comparisons.
If you find yourself writing “there were several changes”, ask which changes actually matter. Our Task 1 overview guide gives you more practice with this step.
A clear four-paragraph plan
Four paragraphs work well for this example. They give each part of the report a clear purpose.
This is a useful structure, not a required paragraph count. For this report, a separate conclusion would repeat the overview, so you can finish after the final comparisons.
Band 8 sample answer
This is a Band 8-style teaching model. It has not been given an official examiner score.
The two pie charts compare the proportions of total household expenditure allocated to six categories in one country in 2005 and 2025.
Overall, housing accounted for the largest share in both years and became more prominent by 2025. The shares devoted to food and clothing fell, while transport took a larger proportion. The shares for leisure and other items were unchanged.
In 2005, housing represented 30% of spending, compared with 25% for food. By 2025, the housing share had risen to 40%, whereas the figure for food had fallen to 15%. These were the largest changes, at ten percentage points each. Together, the two categories made up 55% of total expenditure in both years.
Transport’s share increased from 15% to 20%, making it the second-largest category in 2025, ahead of food. In contrast, the proportion allocated to clothing halved from 10% to 5%, leaving it as the smallest category in the later year. Leisure and other items each accounted for 10% in both charts, so their combined share remained at one fifth of the total.
Useful pie-chart vocabulary
Choose expressions that fit the figures. Learn the whole pattern, including small words such as for, at, from, to and by.
Percentage points or per cent?
A rise from 30% to 40% is an increase of ten percentage points. The relative increase is about 33.3%, because 10 ÷ 30 × 100 ≈ 33.3.
For most reports, “rose from 30% to 40%” is the easiest wording to check. Do not describe this as a rise of 10%.
For more sentence patterns, practise our IELTS Task 1 comparison language.
Why the answer works
The official Writing band descriptors assess task achievement, organisation, vocabulary and grammar. This model demonstrates the following choices:
- Clear selection: the overview identifies housing as the largest category and summarises the main changes.
- Logical grouping: housing and food appear together because their shares move in opposite directions by equal amounts.
- Supported comparisons: the report explains that transport becomes the second-largest category and gives the figures behind that change.
- Precise language: accounted for, allocated to and halved describe the data naturally.
- Varied grammar: whereas joins a contrast, and making it the second-largest category explains a result without adding another full sentence.
Notice that the report stays close to the charts. It gives no explanation for changes in household priorities because the data provide none.
Common mistakes
Calling 40% a majority.
A majority means more than half. Housing has the largest share in 2025, but it does not account for a majority of spending.
Describing a steady rise.
Two dates show the starting and ending values. They do not show whether the share increased steadily between them. Write “rose from 30% to 40%”.
Mixing up “to” and “by”.
The food share fell to 15% and by ten percentage points. The first expression gives the final figure; the second gives the difference.
Using “respectively” in the wrong order.
If you write “food and clothing”, the figures must follow that order: 15% and 5% in 2025.
Inventing causes.
“Housing took a larger share because rents became more expensive” goes beyond the evidence. Describe the change without guessing why it happened.
Practice task
Try another pair of charts using the same approach.
The pie charts show the proportions of electricity generated from four sources in one country in 2000 and 2020. Write a report describing the main features and comparing the figures where relevant.
Original practice data. Write at least 150 words and allow about 20 minutes.
Before writing, identify the largest source in each year, the biggest change in percentage points and the category with an unchanged share.
You could spend three minutes analysing and planning, fourteen minutes writing and three minutes checking. This is a practice routine you can adjust as you improve.
Check your analysis after writing: coal leads in 2000, while gas leads in 2020. Coal shows the biggest change, falling by fifteen percentage points. Nuclear power stays at 20%. Renewables reach the same share as coal in 2020.
Read your overview on its own. Does it communicate the main change? Then check every percentage against the charts and make sure you have compared shares of electricity generation accurately.
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More IELTS writing lessons
- How to Write an IELTS Task 1 Overview
- IELTS Task 1 Comparison Language
- IELTS Writing Task 1: Structure and Report Writing