TASK 1:
ESSAY INFORMATION:
Written by: IELTS I-Ready, 7/4/2024
Marked by: Ex-BC Examiner
(IELTS Academic – 6/4/2024)
Question: The two bar charts show the proportion of 14-16 year-old students studying a modern foreign language in an English speaking country, and the top three foreign languages.
ANSWER:
The bar graphs depict the percentage of pupils aged 14 to 16, of both genders, who took a modern foreign language course, as well as that for the most common three languages, in an English speaking nation in 1984 and 2007. Overall, a decrease was witnessed in both genders, while the proportion of male students studying a foreign language was lower than that of females for both selected years. Additionally, French maintained its popularity throughout.
Regarding gender composition, nearly half of 14 to 16 year old female students in this country learned another language in 1984, which was significantly higher than the rate for their male counterparts at slightly less than 30%. By 2007, the figure for both genders declined, with that for females dropping to approximately 35% and males to nearly 20%.
Concerning the three most common languages, French attracted the highest share of roughly 50% of pupils aged 14 to 16 in 1984, followed by German and Spanish at considerably lower percentages of around 20% and about 5%, respectively. 23 years later, the proportion of French learners approximately halved, whereas that of German only decreased marginally to roughly 15%. Finally, although it almost doubled by 2007, Spanish remained the least popular among the three surveyed languages.
(203 words)
