IELTS Task 1 map: Changes to a village
MapAcademic
The question
The maps below show changes to a village between 2000 and 2025. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words.
A village in 2000 and 2025
Drawn by MyBandPrep for practice.
Write your answer
Then get an estimated band, with checks on your overview, the key features and every figure.
0 words · 150 more to reach 150
Write your own answer first, then compare. Reading a model before you write tends to make you copy it.
The plan
Key features for the overview
- The village became much more developed, with housing and facilities replacing countryside.
- Biggest changes: a housing estate on farmland, and the road extended over the river by a bridge.
How the details are grouped
- The village in 2000
- What had changed by 2025, north then south of the road
Model answer
186 wordsThe maps illustrate how a village changed between 2000 and 2025.
Overall, the village became considerably more developed, with new housing and public facilities replacing much of the countryside. The most noticeable changes were the construction of a large housing estate on former farmland and the extension of the main road across the river.
In 2000, the area north of the main road was almost entirely farmland, while the south contained a group of houses, a small shop, a woodland and an open field. The main road ended at the river on the eastern side of the village.
By 2025, most of the farmland had been replaced by a housing estate, leaving only a small area of fields in the north-east. To the south of the road, the original houses remained, but the shop had been rebuilt as a supermarket. A school had been built on the northern part of the woodland, which was reduced in size as a result. The open field was divided into a car park and a park, and a bridge had been built to carry the main road across the river.
The highlighted paragraph is the overview. Scored by the MyBandPrep checker on 7 October 2026. An estimate, not an examiner’s mark. How scoring works
Why it works
- Task Achievement
- The overview gives the general direction of change (more developed, less countryside) and the two largest changes. Every change on the maps is reported, and so is what stayed the same (the houses).
- Coherence and Cohesion
- The first body paragraph describes 2000 and the second moves through 2025 by area: north of the road, then south. Location phrases (to the south of the road, in the north-east) organise the description.
- Lexical Resource
- Map vocabulary is accurate: former farmland, the construction of, rebuilt as, divided into, reduced in size, carries the road across the river.
- Grammatical Range and Accuracy
- The past perfect passive (“had been replaced by”, “had been built on”) is the key structure for maps of change, used accurately alongside the past simple.
Phrases worth reusing
- became considerably more developed
- a large housing estate on former farmland
- had been replaced by
- had been rebuilt as
- was divided into