Task 1 - Smoking

Today we will look at a very simple Task 1 style essay - there is nothign too difficult about this graph but it does have 3 lines and enough data for us to report on. Please not that IELTS task one is not generally as simple as the example below but it does allow us to look at how the essay task should be strutured and approached. 

I wrote the task in about 12 minutes but for task one, getting it done in 20 minutes is fine. You should write at least 150 words in order to get the best score you can but to get the really high scores, you need to write much more  than that in the time! 

Personally, I find task 1 much more difficult than task 2 in showing good vocabulary but we will look at other types of task 1 in the coming weeks (maps / processes etc.) which are a but more fun. 

Task 1 - Cigarette Smokers in the UK 

(Picture: news.bbc.co.uk /data: Office of National Statistics)

Answer: 

The graph shows the percentage of people in the United Kingdom who indulged in the habit of smoking cigarettes between 1974 and 2003. The data itself can be broken down into the three groups that are shown on the chart; men, women and an overall average derived from an aggregate of both males and females. There is a very clear overall trend that cigarette smoking has experienced a rather dramatic fall in terms of popularity over the three decades shown but that this decrease seems to have tailed off somewhat in the more recent past. 

The percentage of men who smoke which was always larger than that for women was just over 50% in 1974 whereas for women, the respective figure was approximately 40%. From 1974 to 1982, the percentage of men and women who smoke fell to 37% and 35% respectively and then continued to fall more so that by 1990 it stood at 32% for men and 30% for women. After 1990, the percentage still continued to fall however the level of any further falls was much less dramatic for both men and women. 2003 saw that around 28% of the male population smoked. The percentage of women smokers also continued to diminish but at a greater rate than it did for men so that by 2003 only 25% of women were smokers.

The average figure for smokers in the UK also mirrors the trend experienced by male and female smokers, in 1974, the average was 45% but it then fell to 35% in 1982 and by 2003 is sitting comfortably between the male and female percentages at approximately 27%.

It is abundantly clear that a decrease in cigarette consumption has occurred for both the male and female segments of the cigarette market in the UK (this is also reflected in the average figure as well). The reduction in the number of people who smoke could possibly be due to individuals being better informed about possible health issues that are related to tobacco products or could even be a reaction to increases in the price of cigarettes as part of a deliberate government policy to try and discourage smoking by making it much more expensive and thereby reduce the number of smokers in the country. 

(377 words)