Supergroups and Percentages

British People

As we can see from the chart, vegetarians have 7%.

The first time you mention a percentage in IELTS Task 1 writing, make sure that you include both the subgroup and the supergroup:

As we can see from the chart, vegetarians account for 7% of British people.

Or..

As we can see from the chart, 7% of British people are vegetarian.

How to identify the supergroup

If the Task 1 question is a pie chart, the supergroup will be given as a label above or below the chart. The pie chart at the top of the page is labelled British people, and so British people are the supergroup.

What if there's more than one supergroup?

If there is more than one supergroup, just make sure you mention the name of the next supergroup when you introduce it:

British People

Indonesian People

7% of British people are vegetarian, whereas only 1% of Indonesians are vegetarian.

If you want to avoid repetition, you can do this:

7% of British people are vegetarian, whereas the figure for Indonesians is only 1%.

Or this:

Vegetarians account for 7% of people in Britain and only 1% in Indonesia.

If there are 3 or more supergroups, it can be convenient to put numbers in brackets:

7% of British people are vegetarian. This is much higher than the figure in Indonesia (1%), Malaysia (1.5%), and Thailand (1.2%).

Notice that all of these examples include both the subgroup and the supergroup(s)!

How this affects your IELTS score

If you don't mention the supergroup at least once in your writing, then the reader does not know which group the percentages refer to, and you will receive low scores for Task Achievement and for Coherence and Cohesion.