Practice Question - Employment by sector in Germany

Hi Plin

The chart is showing the percentage of employment in a number of sectors/fields/categories, so you can only really refer to them as 'the percentage of people employed in X was/rose/fell' or 'X's share of employment was/rose/fell'. We can't talk about numbers, or the numbers recruited or hired because we don't know what they are. Let me try and illustrate with this chart:

Children taking archery lessons

You may want to say the number of girls taking archery fell in 2015, but the chart doesn't show that.  It shows that the percentage fell.  This is clear if you look at the raw data for that bar chart:



You can see that actually, the numbers of girls taking archery rose by 60.  That's why in Task 1 you must only say what you SEE or your report will be inaccurate.

Back to your report! 



1. in
2. Pronoun-referent agreement – because you’re talking about sectors (plural) ‘its’ is incorrect; use ‘their’.
3. Rather than number (we don’t know the numbers because the chart is in percentages) you could say ‘share’
4. We don’t know if they recruited the most or not; use employed.
5. We don’t know if they hired the most or not; use employed. With both 4 and 5, maybe they recruited lots and lots of people the year before, and they were still employed during the year the survey was done. They were employed that year, but not hired or recruited.
6. for
7. rose Raised is the past form of ‘to raise’ which means to be put up or made higher by something. You raise your hand in class, or the government raises taxes. Some agent (the government, your arm) causes it to happen. It’s very unlikely you’ll need ‘raise’ in a Task 1 essay. Rose is the past for of ‘to rise’ which means to increase or go up. Hot air rises from a kettle: there isn’t an agent making it go up. This is the verb you need for Task 1.
8. The government sector showed reduced employment share
9. in
10. The
11. in / in terms of
12. which
13. The
14. sectors
15. low at (A slump is a heavy and prolonged drop. It is usually only used in reference to line graphs where there is enough data over time to see one.)
16. Since changes is plural, it needs to be ‘there were’
17. in

In terms of selecting and reporting the data (Task achievement) it is fine, but you need to be more precise with your language to get above 6.0. 

Kind regards
Teacher Jill

www.ieltsexchange.com