Reasons Students Chose a UK University (1987-2007)

Response 01

Must fixSuggested

Clean text

Answer · 162 words · 3 paragraphs · 8 comments

Comments

Must fixTA

Preserve the single-university scope

Original: British universities
Replace with: a particular UK university
Why: Both charts concern students choosing one particular university. The plural wording incorrectly extends the data to universities across Britain.

SuggestedTA

Retain the reason behind the choice

Original: course offerings
Replace with: the suitability of degree courses
Why: The leading category concerns whether degree courses were suitable, not simply whether courses were offered. Keeping “suitability” preserves the chart’s specific meaning.

SuggestedTA

Summarise the main changes

Applies to: Paragraph 1
Suggestion: Extend the overview beyond the leading category by summarising the rise in proximity to the parental home and the sharp fall in sports and social activities.
Why: The existing overview identifies the largest category in both years, but does not yet give an overall picture of how preferences changed. The increase to 22% and decrease to 6% provide that contrast.

Must fixTA

Correct the position of proximity

Applies to: Paragraph 2
Suggestion: The proximity of the university to students’ parental homes (10%) ranked last, attracting the smallest share of students.
Why: At 10%, proximity was fifth, below teaching at 15%. “Moderate influence” obscures its actual position as the smallest category, and “parental homes” identifies the location in the legend.

Must fixTA

Correct the 1987 labels and ranking

Applies to: Paragraph 2
Suggestion: Recheck the first sentence against the 1987 legend: suitable degree courses were first at 35%; resources were second at 21%; sports and social activities were third at 19%; teaching quality was fourth at 15%. There is no separate training-programmes category.
Why: The sentence assigns 35% to teaching and 15% to training programmes, then calls these second and third. Both the category mapping and ordering conflict with the chart.

Must fixTA

Keep the two years separate

Applies to: Paragraph 2
Suggestion: For sports and social activities in 1987, report 19% and third place. Reserve 6% and the lowest rank for the 2007 chart.
Why: The final sentence places the 2007 value and ranking inside the 1987 paragraph. This also contradicts the later, correct comparison of 19% in 1987 with 6% in 2007.

Must fixTA

Match the 2007 values to their categories

Applies to: Paragraph 3
Suggestion: Correct the second sentence’s category labels: 37% belongs to suitable degree courses and 18% to quality of teaching. Compare these with 35% and 15% in 1987, respectively.
Why: Teaching did not account for 37%, and training programmes are not a separate category. The figures represent small increases in course suitability and teaching quality.

Must fixTA

Use observed changes rather than possible causes

Applies to: Paragraph 3
Suggestion: Remove the speculation about changes in the educational landscape. End with an observed comparison, such as the 13-percentage-point fall for sports and social activities versus the four-point fall for resources.
Why: The final sentence offers an explanation that the charts cannot establish. Even with “possibly”, external causes remain unsupported; a numerical comparison develops the report using available evidence.

Score details

Response 01

Estimated band7.0/ 9

Overall assessment

The response is well organised and written in fluent, precise language with a clear overview and effective comparisons across the two years. Its main limitation is repeated mislabeling of pie chart categories, so several percentages are attributed to the wrong reasons, weakening data accuracy.

Task Achievement

The response gives a clear overview, covers all categories, and makes relevant comparisons, but several data points are inaccurate: for example, 35% and 37% belong to suitable degree courses rather than teaching quality, and 6% is the 2007 sports figure rather than the 1987 one.

6.0

Coherence and Cohesion

Ideas progress logically from overview to year-by-year description with effective linking devices such as 'Notably', 'By 2007', and 'Interestingly', giving a mostly seamless progression.

7.0

Lexical Resource

Vocabulary is varied and generally fluent, with phrases such as “noticeable shift in priorities” and “decision-making processes”. Precision is uneven: “training programs” does not match a chart category, and “British universities” broadens the scope beyond the particular university shown.

7.0

GRA

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

A wide range of complex structures, including participle clauses and varied sentence patterns, is used with control and only rare minor slips.

7.0

What to work on next

Check each figure against the chart legend carefully so that every percentage is paired with the correct category name before reporting it.

Response 02

Must fixSuggested

Clean text

Answer · 180 words · 4 paragraphs · 17 comments

Comments

Must fixGRA

Use plural agreement for two charts

Original: pie chart illustrates
Replace with: pie charts illustrate
Why: The task contains two pie charts. Make both the noun and its present-tense verb plural.

Must fixGRA

Refer to students collectively

Original: the student’s decision
Replace with: students’ decisions
Why: The singular possessive suggests one student’s decision. These charts summarise choices made by a group of students.

SuggestedTA

Identify two snapshots

Original: between 1987 and 2007
Replace with: in 1987 and 2007
Why: The charts give values for two individual years, rather than observations throughout the intervening period.

SuggestedLR

Use the conventional overview signal

Original: In an overview
Replace with: Overall
Why: “Overall” directly introduces a summary of the main patterns. “In an overview” sounds as though you are referring to a separate overview rather than presenting your own.

Must fixLR

Avoid the unintended meaning of concerning

Original: most concerning reason
Replace with: most important reason
Why: “Concerning” usually means worrying. The intended meaning is that suitable courses were the most important or most frequently selected reason.

SuggestedGRA

Use a collective reference to parental homes

Original: their parent’s house
Replace with: their parents’ homes
Why: “Their parent’s house” can grammatically refer to one parent per student, so it is not necessarily a possessive error. “Their parents’ homes” is a clearer collective reference to the chart’s parental-home category. The same refinement applies to “their parent’s houses” in the final paragraph.

Must fixLR

Use the correct complement after factor

Original: factor to study
Replace with: factor in choosing to study
Why: “A factor in choosing to study” connects the influence to the decision. The infinitive directly after “factor” does not express that relationship naturally.

Must fixGRA

Maintain the past-time reference

Original: choose
Replace with: chose
Why: The sentence reports students’ choices in 2007. Use the past tense to match the historical figures.

Must fixLR

Use a natural verb with course

Original: to obtain a suitable degree course
Replace with: to take a suitable degree course
Why: Students take a course and obtain a qualification. “Obtain a course” mixes these two collocations.

SuggestedLR

Give the percentage a direct change verb

Original: witnessed a slight growth
Replace with: increased slightly
Why: A percentage can increase directly; it does not need to “witness” growth. This makes the numerical trend more concise and idiomatic.

Must fixGRA

Remove respectively without paired series

Original: 17% respectively
Replace with: 17%
Why: “Respectively” matches two or more items in one list to another list. A single change expressed as “from 21% to 17%” needs no such matching word.

Must fixGRA

Clarify what became the least popular reason

Applies to: Paragraph 3
Suggestion: Similarly, the share citing good sports and social activities dropped considerably from 19% to 6%, making this the least popular reason for choosing the university in 2007.
Why: In “6% which was the least popular factor”, the relative clause appears to describe the percentage as a factor. Explicitly connect the ranking to sports and social activities.

Must fixTA

Describe the measured change accurately

Applies to: Paragraph 3
Suggestion: In the resources sentence, report that the share citing resource quality fell from 21% to 17%. Remove the claim that this happened “consistently”: two endpoint values cannot show the pattern in the intervening years.
Why: The chart gives students’ reasons, not a measurement of resource quality itself. It also provides no intermediate observations to establish a consistent decline.

Must fixGRA

Keep a generic institution name lowercase

Original: University
Replace with: university
Why: This is a common noun, not part of a university’s proper name, so it should not take a capital letter.

Must fixTA

Distinguish percentages from student counts

Applies to: Paragraph 4
Suggestion: Use “proportion” or “percentage”, rather than “total number” and “number”, for both comparisons in this paragraph.
Why: The charts supply shares only. Without the total student population in each year, changes in absolute numbers cannot be determined.

Must fixTA

Use the labelled proximity value

Applies to: Paragraph 4
Suggestion: Correct the proximity comparison to 10% in 1987 and 22% in 2007, and describe the share as having more than doubled.
Why: The 2007 green slice is labelled 22%, not 20%. Its share therefore increased by more than a factor of two.

Must fixTA

Correct the direction of the teaching trend

Applies to: Paragraph 4
Suggestion: Correct the teaching comparison to an increase from 15% to 18%. Revise “almost halved” and the contrasting connector to reflect that teaching, like proximity, gained share.
Why: The 2007 purple slice is labelled 18%, not 8%. Teaching rose by three percentage points, so the stated decline and the contrast with rising proximity are both inaccurate.

Score details

Response 02

Estimated band7.0/ 9

Overall assessment

The response covers all five reasons and provides an overview identifying the leading category and the rise of proximity to second place. Organisation and sentence variety are strengths, but data reporting has a substantive error: teaching increased from 15% to 18%, rather than almost halving to 8%. The proximity figure is also misstated, and several expressions confuse preference shares with student counts or resource quality.

Task Achievement

The response identifies the leading category and the rise of proximity to second place, and covers all five reasons. However, it incorrectly describes teaching as almost halving from 15% to 8%, when it rose to 18%. It also reports proximity as 20% rather than the labelled 22%, confuses percentages with counts, and implies a consistent resources decline that two snapshots cannot establish.

6.0

Coherence and Cohesion

Ideas are organised logically across paragraphs with a clear overview and varied linking devices like 'Similarly' and 'In contrast', though phrases such as 'In an overview' and 'respectively' are used awkwardly.

7.0

Lexical Resource

Vocabulary shows some flexibility, including “a considerable drop”, but several collocations are imprecise or awkward. “Most concerning reason” suggests worry rather than importance, “obtain a suitable degree course” uses the wrong verb for taking a course, and “witnessed a slight growth” is less direct than a simple change verb.

7.0

GRA

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

The response uses a range of complex structures, including relative and contrastive clauses, with mostly accurate control and only occasional slips in verb tense and agreement that do not impede meaning.

7.0

What to work on next

Check each trend against the legend and both years: teaching rose from 15% to 18%, while proximity rose from 10% to 22%. Describe these as changes in percentages, and avoid claiming a consistent trend when only two years are shown.

Response 03

Must fixSuggested

Clean text

Answer · 172 words · 4 paragraphs · 8 comments

Comments

SuggestedTA

Calibrate the academic trend

Applies to: Paragraph 2
Suggestion: Qualify the opening generalisation: courses, resources and teaching together accounted for 71% in 1987 and 72% in 2007, so their combined share increased only marginally.
Why: The opening claim is broadly defensible, but the combined change is just one percentage point and resource quality actually lost share. Make the limited extent of the increase clear.

SuggestedTA

Include the largest increase

Applies to: Paragraph 2
Suggestion: Include proximity to the parental home in the overview: it rose from the smallest category to the second largest.
Why: The overview captures the leading reason and the steepest fall, but omits the most substantial increase, from 10% to 22%. This rank reversal is a major feature.

SuggestedTA

Keep the reported population precise

Original: applicants
Replace with: students
Why: The question describes students who chose the university, rather than its wider pool of applicants. Use the population supplied in the task.

Must fixTA

Distinguish quality from reputation

Original: A sound teaching reputation
Replace with: The quality of teaching
Why: The chart identifies teaching quality as the reason, not the university’s teaching reputation. The latter introduces a different basis for the choice.

Must fixTA

Avoid adding details to category labels

Applies to: Paragraph 3
Suggestion: Quality of resources ranked second at 21%, and good sports and social activities came a close third at 19%.
Why: Libraries and laboratories are plausible examples, but the chart does not identify particular resources. “Vibrant extracurricular life” also adds an evaluation and makes the sports category less explicit. Preserve the two categories and their correct ranking.

SuggestedLR

Keep the numerical description neutral

Original: a mere 6 %
Replace with: 6 %
Why: “Mere” adds the writer’s judgment that the figure is unusually small. The numerical decline and the stated last-place ranking already convey its scale.

SuggestedLR

Name what doubled

Applies to: Paragraph 4
Suggestion: In the proximity sentence, make “the proportion of students citing proximity to the parental home” the subject of “more than doubled”.
Why: The 10%-to-22% comparison is correct, but “proximity to family more than doubled” literally describes a change in proximity. The measured change concerns the share of students giving this reason.

Must fixTA

Separate preference share from resource quality

Applies to: Paragraph 4
Suggestion: In the resources comparison, report the fall in the proportion of students citing resource quality, from 21% to 17%. Do not describe the quality of the resources themselves as falling.
Why: The chart measures how often a reason was selected. It gives no measurements showing that actual or perceived resource quality declined.

Score details

Response 03

Estimated band8.0/ 9

Overall assessment

The response reports all five categories with accurate figures and clear year-by-year comparisons. It identifies the leading reason and the sharp decline in sports and social activities, using varied and largely accurate language. The overview could better calibrate the marginal combined rise in academic factors and highlight the substantial increase in proximity to the parental home. Some wording adds details or implies changes in resource quality that the charts do not measure.

Task Achievement

All five categories from the charts are reported with accurate figures, a clear overview identifies the main trends, and comparisons between 1987 and 2007 are consistently made with only minor elaboration beyond the data.

8.0

Coherence and Cohesion

The report is logically sequenced from overview to year-by-year detail, with a wide range of cohesive devices and referencing used naturally so that progression is effortless throughout.

8.0

Lexical Resource

Vocabulary is varied and generally fluent, with effective expressions such as “edged up” and “consolidating first place”. Precision is less secure where “proximity to family more than doubled” leaves the measured share implicit and “perceived resource quality” appears to describe quality rather than the percentage selecting it.

8.0

GRA

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

A wide range of complex structures, including relative clauses, participial phrases, and concessive constructions, is used with flexibility and consistent accuracy across the response.

8.0

What to work on next

In the overview, highlight proximity rising from last to second place and qualify the academic increase as marginal. In the detail, distinguish changes in the share citing resource quality from changes in resource quality itself.

Key features: Reasons Students Chose a UK University (1987-2007)

Overview

Key features

Sample responses and feedback

Response 01

Score details

Overall assessment

Task Achievement

Coherence and Cohesion

Lexical Resource

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

What to work on next

Response 02

Score details

Overall assessment

Task Achievement

Coherence and Cohesion

Lexical Resource

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

What to work on next

Response 03

Score details

Overall assessment

Task Achievement

Coherence and Cohesion

Lexical Resource

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

What to work on next

Useful vocabulary: Reasons Students Chose a UK University (1987-2007)

suitable degree courses

sports and social activities

Sentence patterns: Reasons Students Chose a UK University (1987-2007)

Write your response

suitable degree courses

sports and social activities

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