Participation in different sports (bar chart)
IELTS Academic Task 1 practice: a bar chart showing how many people took part in six different sports in 2023, with a band 8 model answer.
Band 6.5
Prompt: The bar chart below shows the number of people, in millions, who took part in six different sports in 2023. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
The bar chart gives information about the number of people, in millions, who participated in six different sports in 2023.
Running was clearly the most popular sport, with 9.5 million participants. Swimming came in second place at 8.5 million people, and it was followed closely by cycling, which had 7.2 million participants. Football also attracted a fairly large number of people, at 6.0 million.
The two least popular sports were tennis and golf. Tennis had the smallest number of participants, at only 2.5 million, while golf was a little higher with 3.1 million people taking part.
Overall, running, swimming and cycling were the three leading activities, each with more than seven million participants, whereas tennis and golf were considerably less popular, both attracting fewer than four million people during that year.
Band 8.0
Prompt: The bar chart below shows the number of people, in millions, who took part in six different sports in 2023. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
The bar chart shows the number of people, in millions, who took part in six different sports in 2023.
Overall, running and swimming were the most popular activities, attracting the largest numbers of participants, while tennis and golf drew the smallest followings.
Running was the clear leader, with 9.5 million participants. Swimming came second, at 8.5 million, and cycling was close behind with 7.2 million people. These three activities together accounted for the bulk of participation shown on the chart.
Football occupied a middle position, with 6 million participants, some way below the leading trio but still considerably more popular than the remaining sports. At the lower end of the scale, golf attracted 3.1 million people, while tennis was the least popular of the six, with just 2.5 million participants. The gap between the most and least popular activities was substantial, as running had almost four times as many participants as tennis.