Academic
IELTS Academic writing practice test 1
A Task 1 chart description and a Task 2 essay, with a Band 9 model answer for each. Free, with no signup.
This is a complete IELTS Academic writing practice test. Task 1 asks you to describe a bar chart in at least 150 words in about twenty minutes, and Task 2 is an essay of at least 250 words in about forty.
Write both under time before you look at anything else. Remember that Task 1 asks you to report what the chart shows, not to explain why it happened or to give an opinion. Both of those are outside the task and neither earns marks.
Task 1 · 20 minutes · at least 150 words
Task 1: the question
You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.
The bar chart below shows the modes of transport people used to get to work in Grahamston in 2020 and 2025, as a percentage of the total working population. The category marked Other includes ferry, aeroplane and taxi.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Write at least 150 words.
Nothing you write here is sent anywhere or stored. Copy it out before you leave the page.
Show a Band 9 answer to this task (209 words)
The bar chart compares modes of transport used by workers in Grahamston in 2020 and 2025, expressed as a percentage of the total working population.
Overall, driving remained the dominant mode by a considerable margin in both years, despite a notable decline. The most significant change was a near-doubling in home working, reflecting a broader shift away from daily commuting over the period.
In 2020, approximately 61% of workers drove to work. By 2025, this had fallen to around 52% — a decline of approximately 9 percentage points — though driving remained the single most common mode by far. Working from home rose from roughly 9% to approximately 18%, an increase larger than any other category, which coincided with the fall in car commuting and likely reflects a broader shift away from daily travel to work. Public transport also declined, from around 11% to 8%, continuing the broader pattern in which every motorised or shared mode either fell or remained flat over the period.
Walking held steady at around 5% in both years, while private vehicle passengers fell slightly from approximately 7% to 6% and cycling rose modestly from about 4% to 6%. The Other category — ferry, aeroplane, and taxi — increased slightly from around 3% to 5%.
Read it after you have written your own, not before. Comparing your answer with a model is useful; copying its structure into a different question is not, and examiners recognise it.
Task 2 · 40 minutes · at least 250 words
Task 2: the question
Nothing you write here is sent anywhere or stored. Copy it out before you leave the page.
Show a Band 9 answer to this task (301 words)
While it is understandable that many people equate punishment with imprisonment, I strongly disagree that incarceration is the appropriate response to every criminal act. For minor offences, community service is a more effective, humane, and pragmatic alternative.
Sending all offenders to prison, regardless of the severity of their crime, is neither just nor practical. Prisons are costly to operate, and housing non-violent, low-risk individuals alongside hardened criminals exposes them to criminal networks, entrenched attitudes, and survival behaviours that they would never otherwise encounter — making the prison environment itself a driver of future offending rather than a deterrent. What is often overlooked is that a custodial sentence also strips individuals of their employment, family stability, and social standing — and when people lose these anchors, they are statistically more likely to return to criminal behaviour after release, making the punishment counterproductive as well as unjust.
Community service, by contrast, addresses the root purpose of a justice system: rehabilitation and reparation. By requiring offenders to contribute meaningfully to the community they have harmed, it fosters a sense of accountability that a prison cell cannot replicate, because the offender must face and serve the community they have wronged rather than being removed from it. Research consistently shows that offenders who complete community-based sentences have lower rates of reoffending than those who are imprisoned. Community service also allows individuals to maintain employment and family relationships, preserving the social bonds that are among the strongest protective factors against future criminal behaviour.
In conclusion, a blanket policy of imprisonment for all crimes fails to distinguish between those who pose a genuine threat to society and those who merely transgress it. Community service offers a constructive, evidence-based alternative for minor offenders — and a justice system willing to make that distinction is ultimately a more effective one.
Read it after you have written your own, not before. Comparing your answer with a model is useful; copying its structure into a different question is not, and examiners recognise it.
The honest limit of a free page
Nobody can tell you what that would score
Reading and listening convert from a raw score, so this site can mark them for you. Writing cannot be marked that way. There is no answer key, because the assessment is a judgement against four criteria: task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, and grammatical range and accuracy.
Comparing your answer with the Band 9 model above will show you some of the gap. What it will not tell you is which of the four criteria is holding your band down, and that is almost always the thing worth fixing first.
IELTStestONLINE assesses your writing against those four criteria, instantly and as often as you like, using a system built by a former IELTS examiner and examiner trainer.
See what membership includesQuestions about this IELTS Academic writing practice test
How long is the IELTS General Training writing test?
Sixty minutes for both tasks. Spend about twenty minutes on the Task 1 letter and forty on the Task 2 essay, which is worth twice the marks.
How many words do I need to write?
At least 150 for Task 1 and at least 250 for Task 2. Writing under the minimum is penalised under Task Achievement, and there is no benefit in writing far over it.
Can I get my answer marked here?
No. Writing is judged against four criteria rather than checked against an answer key, so no free page can score it. That is what full membership on IELTStestONLINE is for.
Should I read the model answer first?
No. Write your own answer under time, then read the model and compare. Reading it first turns a test into a copying exercise, and examiners recognise borrowed structures.
Is Task 2 the same in both modules?
Yes. Task 2 is an essay of at least 250 words in both Academic and General Training. Only Task 1 differs, where General Training writes a letter.