Children’s expenditure - band 7
The table compares the weekly spending of British boys and girls, from 7 to 15 years old, on assorted goods and services.
Overall, it can be seen that girls spend slightly more than boys in a week time, with £13,60 and £12,40 respectively.
Looking at the data, we can understand that for boys, their highest amount of money is spent on games, toys and pets, with £2,50 a week, while girls prefer to spend their money on clothing and footwear, with £2,70 per week. Moreover, snacks and drinks, as well as other food purchases, are also goods that both young boys and girls spend quite a lot of money on weekly, with exactly £4,60 each for the two categories.
On the other hand, personal care is the item where boys spend the least amount of their money, with only £0,10 a week, whereas girls is with other entertainment, in which they invest only £0,20 of their savings per week.
To conclude, it is interesting to observe that items like music, magazines and sporting activities did not achieve the top of the preferences of these children, and they were all in the middle of the table, with expenditures not above a pound per week for any of them.
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Task Achievement
The report successfully highlights most of the key differences between the boys’ and girls’ spending habits without mentioning every item, and there are some good comparisons between the data. The conclusion makes additional observations from the overview. (7.5)
Coherence & Cohesion
Paragraphs have been used appropriately, however, the information could have been organised a bit more logically to achieve a clearer overall progression, i.e. similarities in one paragraph and differences in another. Linkers work well for adding, contrasting and making comparisons. (7)
Lexical Resource
The writer demonstrates good control of vocabulary and usage is accurate with a noticeable effort to paraphrase. However, using a variety of adverbs with comparative adjectives would make the report more descriptive and interesting to read. (7)
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
You use appropriate structures but you could have used the passive more. (6.5/7)
Overall Comment - how to improve
On the whole, this is a good report which summarises the information and makes good comparisons, although the data could be grouped more clearly and logically and more variety of expression would make the report more interesting to read.