IELTS Writing Task 1 – Top Ten Date-Producing Countries

Questions:

1. What does the bargraph show?
2. Overall, what were the top three or four producers?
3. Which country produced the most dates?
4. How much more did Egypt produce than Iran? (in tonnes)
5. What country was the second-highest producer in 2001?
6. How many tonnes of dates did Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE produce?
7. How does Algeria’s production compare to the UAE’s output?
8. Libya and Sudan each accounted for less than _____________ tonnes.
9. Oman’s production is ___________________ Egypt’s figure. (Insert a fraction)
10. In summary, how many countries produce over half a million tonnes a year, and which country is the leading producer?

Use full answers to the sentences above to form the basis of your three-paragraph essay. Then write a short description of the information in the chart.

Exercise

Before you write, try this exercise.

Find ONE error in each sentence below, then order the corrected sentences to make a model essay.

1. Finaly, Sudan’s and Libya’s crops yielded under 0.2 million each.
2. In summary, date production is the most abundant in Egypt and Iraq.
3.  Pakistan, with an output of approximately 630,000, was not far ahead. First, Egypt took the lion’s share of production with over a million tonnes but Iran is a close second with almost .9 million.
4. The bar graph shows date production in tonnes for the world’s top producer in 2001.
5. The rest nations, however, were far less productive. Algeria supplied the world with nearly 400,000 tonnes and Oman around a half million.
6. Following them came the UAE and Saudi Arabia, rival each other with about 740,000 tonnes each.
7. Overall, Egypt and Iran account to the majority of goods whilst Sudan and Libya are in the minority.
8. In contrast, harvests in Oman and countries in northern Africa are far more plentiful.
9. Ten countrys in the Gulf region and northern Africa are featured.

Sample Writing

The graph reveals information on the top ten date-producing countries in the year 2001. Each unit is measured in tones.

Apparently, it can be seen that the manufacturing industry in Egypt recorded a successful year with as many as 1,100,000 goods being produced, closely followed by Iran with just well over 800,000 products at the same time.

The second biggest group includes UAE, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iraq, whose figures were consistently above 600,000. In fact, the number of goods produced in Saudi Arabia and UAE was even just a little under that of Iran (ranging from 650,000 to around 670,000, respectively).

Another striking feature is that the year 2001 seemed to be a failure to 4 remaining countries (Algeria, Libya, Oman and Sudan) as their proportion of the products were always less than 400,000 with Algeria experiencing the highest number of approximately 380,000, or one third of Egypt.

In short, the graph may well reflect the differences among ten date- producing countries during the year 2001 . It is clear that while some countries recorded a harvest year, others might not develop well (195 words).