IELTS Task 1 pie chart: How water was used
Pie chartAcademic
The question
The pie charts below show how water was used in one country in 2000 and 2020. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words.
Water use by sector (% of total)
- Agriculture
- Industry
- Households
- Other
See the figures as a table
| 2000 | 2020 | |
|---|---|---|
| Agriculture | 70% | 58% |
| Industry | 18% | 22% |
| Households | 9% | 16% |
| Other | 3% | 4% |
The figures are invented for practice. They are not real statistics.
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
- Agriculture used the most water in both years, but its share fell.
- Industry and especially households took larger shares.
How the details are grouped
- 2000, and agriculture's fall
- The sectors that grew
Model answer
166 wordsThe two pie charts illustrate the proportions of water used for different purposes in one country in 2000 and 2020, divided into agriculture, industry, households and other uses.
Overall, agriculture consumed the largest share of water in both years, although its dominance weakened over the period. At the same time, the shares taken by industry and, in particular, households increased.
In 2000, farming accounted for 70% of all water use, nearly four times as much as industry, which used 18%. Households consumed only 9%, and the remaining 3% went to other purposes. Twenty years later, agriculture's share had dropped by twelve percentage points to 58%, although it still represented well over half of the total.
The fall in agriculture's share was matched by gains in every other sector. Industrial use grew moderately, from 18% to 22%, whereas household consumption showed the sharpest relative increase, almost doubling from 9% to 16%. The proportion used for other purposes hardly changed, rising by just one percentage point to 4%.
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
- Pie charts show shares, not amounts, and the essay never claims that the country used more or less water in total. The overview gives the largest sector and the direction of change.
- Coherence and Cohesion
- The first body paragraph sets out 2000 and agriculture's fall; the second explains where that share went. “The fall in agriculture's share was matched by gains…” links the two.
- Lexical Resource
- Words for the sectors are varied (farming, industrial use, household consumption) and so are the verbs (consumed, accounted for, represented). “Percentage points” is used correctly for a change in a share.
- Grammatical Range and Accuracy
- Past perfect for the change by 2020, a concession with “although”, and a precise comparison in “nearly four times as much as”.
Phrases worth reusing
- its dominance weakened over the period
- accounted for 70% of all water use
- dropped by twelve percentage points
- showed the sharpest relative increase
- hardly changed