Academic Task 1 model answer: Young people's leisure time, 2005–2025
The question
The graph below shows the average number of hours per week that people aged 16 to 24 in one country spent on three leisure activities between 2005 and 2025. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
| Year | Watching television | Watching online video | Reading for pleasure |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | 18 | 1 | 6 |
| 2010 | 16 | 4 | 6 |
| 2015 | 13 | 9 | 5 |
| 2020 | 9 | 15 | 4 |
| 2025 | 7 | 17 | 4 |
Model answer
The line graph illustrates how many hours a week young people aged 16 to 24 in one country spent watching television, watching online video and reading for pleasure between 2005 and 2025.
Overall, television viewing fell steeply while online video rose dramatically, and the two activities swapped places as the most popular pastime in the second half of the 2010s. Reading time, by contrast, declined only slightly, and from the mid-2010s it was the least popular of the three activities.
In 2005, television was by far the dominant activity, accounting for 18 hours a week, whereas online video occupied just one hour. Television viewing then declined steadily, falling to 13 hours by 2015 and to only seven hours by 2025 — less than half its original level.
Online video followed the opposite trajectory. Its growth was gradual at first, reaching four hours in 2010, but then accelerated sharply, climbing to 15 hours in 2020 and reaching a high of 17 hours at the end of the period. Reading, meanwhile, changed little. It stood at six hours a week in both 2005 and 2010, after which the figure edged down to four hours by 2020 and then levelled off.
Why it works
Task Achievement
The overview picks out the crossover between television and online video — the single most important feature — and every line is described with its start, end and key turning points.
Coherence & Cohesion
One body paragraph for the falling line and one for the rising line; 'Online video followed the opposite trajectory' links the two without a stack of connectors.
Lexical Resource
Precise trend language — 'declined steadily', 'accelerated sharply', 'edged down', 'levelled off' — chosen to match the size of each change.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
Participle clauses ('falling to…', 'climbing to…'), a 'whereas' contrast and an 'after which' relative clause, all accurately controlled.
Written by Stride as a study model against the public IELTS band descriptors. It has not been marked by an IELTS examiner.