Graph 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on this task. The chart below shows the amount of leisure time enjoyed by men and women of different employment status. Write a report for a university lecturer describing the information below. You should write at least 150 words.
Tips for writing the answer for this Academic Writing Task 1:
1. The given bar graph compares the data for the year 1998 and 1999. So your answer should be in past tense. For instance: Full time employed men enjoyed about 44 hours of leisure time while the female of this category had approximately 38 hours of leisure time.
2. Notice that no data for the home staying husbands and part-time employed men are given in the graph. So mention that fact as well. Example: No data for the part-time employed men and house-staying men are given in the illustration….
3. Observe that men and women of retired and unemployed categories had more free times than the employed people. This is an important fact of the graph. So mention this fact in your writing.
4. Female had less leisure time than the men in the given categories. As this is an important factor of the graph, mention this and also give a hint that this might have happened because of the females’ engagement of household works, child rearing etc.
Summary of the graph:
Unemployed and retired people had more leisure time than the part-time and full-time employed men and women. Also, women enjoyed less leisure time than men as they have more involvement in household works. No data was given for the part-time job holding and house-staying male.
Sample Answer:
The provided chart shows the number of leisure hours enjoyed by men and women in a typical week in 1998-99, according to gender and employment status. As is observed from the graph, the unemployed and retired men and women had more leisure time than the other type of people.
Among the full-time employed people, men had about 45 hours of leisure time on an average per week compared to the 38 hours of leisure time for women. No data is given for the part-time employed men and women from this category enjoyed 40 hours of leisure time in a week. This figure is slightly more than the employed women perhaps because of their employment nature.
Unemployed and retired people had the longest period of leisure activity both for men and women and men had a bit more hours than the women. As expected the retired and unemployed people enjoyed about 78 to 82 hours per week which is longer than people from other employment statuses. Lastly, housewives enjoyed approximately 50 hours of leisure time which is more than the employed women but less than the unemployed and retired women. The graph reflects that men had more leisure time from all employment statuses than women which indicates that women spent more time working at home than their male counterparts.
The graph summarises that the male enjoyed more leisure time than women and employed people had less time for leisure activities than retired and unemployed people.
Sample Answer 2:
The bar chart compares the leisure hours enjoyed by male and female based on the employment status during the year 1998 to 1999.
It is clearly evident from the graph that female in all respective of employment status enjoys time killing when compared to male. Men and women, who are unemployed and retired, spent more leisure hours when compared to employed people. Unemployed males (85 hours per week) and females (78 hours per week) only show a slight difference in hours spent for leisure time. Similarly, retired employees (male75 hours per week, female 82 hours per week) spent almost same leisure hour irrespective of gender.
In contrast, the number of leisure hour spent by employed males is 42 hour weekly and by female employees, this was around 40 hours per week. Housewives spent almost 10 hours more than employed females (50 hours per week).
Overall, the bar chart shows the number of leisure hours spent during retirement and unemployment is high when compared to employment period. In addition, males enjoy more leisure hours per week when compared to females.