IELTS Academic Writing Task 1: Percentage of people interested in certain sports
Tables make a frequent appearance in the IELTS test.
It is essential to mention every category mentioned in your essay – if you don’t, you will have omitted some key information, thus limiting your Task Achievement score.
We structured this essay in the following way…
1st Body Paragraph: a paraphrase of the question
2nd Body Paragraph: the overview
3rd Body Paragraph: the most and least popular sports are described
4th Body Paragraph: the data for all the other sports is described
The Question
You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.
The table below shows the results of surveys of people in the UK, carried out in three different decades. It shows the percentages of people who said they were interested in certain sports.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
You should write at least 150 words.
Percentage of UK residents interested in named sports
The Answer
The table illustrates the proportion of people living in the UK who followed six different sports at three points in time over the two decades to 2010.
Overall, there was no discernible trend in the popularity of football, golf, cricket or swimming. Meanwhile, rugby steadily rose in popularity, while judo was the only sport that became less popular over time.
Football was the most popular sport throughout the time period shown, accounting for 50-60% of respondents. Judo was consistently the least followed sport, nominated by 9% of those surveyed in 1990, falling steadily in the years to 2000 and dropping to just 4% by 2010.
In 1990, just over a tenth of the UK population chose rugby, cricket, and swimming as their favourite sport, while around a quarter of respondents reported enjoying golf the most. In 2000, rugby viewership had risen substantially, to 20% of those surveyed, compared to that of golf, cricket and swimming, which remained largely flat. By 2010, interest in rugby had increased still further to 24%, while slightly fewer people were following golf and swimming than a decade previously. There was a modest rise in the number of cricket followers, to 14%, over the same period.
What Next?
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