Writing Task 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.
The chart below shows the amount of leisure time enjoyed by men and women of different employment status.
Write a report for a university lecturer describing the information shown below.
You should write at least 150 words.
Self-check before you finish
- Write an overview: the main trends or the most striking features.
- Select the key features and support them with figures — do not describe every number.
- Make comparisons, and use the correct units (%, thousands, hours).
- Report only what the data shows: no personal opinion or invented reasons.
- Check you have at least 150 words.
Model Answer (examiner-written)
The chart shows the number of hours of leisure enjoyed by men and women in a typical week in 1998–9, according to gender and employment status.
Among those employed full-time, men on average had fifty hours of leisure, whereas women had approximately thirty-seven hours. There were no figures given for male part-time workers, but female part-timers had forty hours of leisure time, only slightly more than women in full-time employment, perhaps reflecting their work in the home.
In the unemployed and retired categories, leisure time showed an increase for both sexes, as might have been expected. Here too, men enjoyed more leisure time — over eighty hours, compared with seventy hours for women, perhaps once again reflecting the fact that women spend more time working in the home than men.
Lastly, housewives enjoyed approximately fifty-four hours of leisure, on average. There were no figures given for male housewives. Overall, the chart demonstrates that in the categories for which statistics on male leisure time were available, men enjoyed at least ten hours of extra leisure time.
Length: 175 words.