CAEL Speaking Task 3 Bar Chart Sample Answer

How to Start a Bar Chart Response

When preparing for CAEL Speaking Task 3, it is important that you understand how to formulate your introduction. Your introduction should paraphrase the question so that the examiner knows what you are talking about. 

Your introduction might look like this:

The charts illustrate men’s and women’s employment rates for Canada, South Korea, and Sweden during 2005 and 2015. Employment percentages are shown on the vertical axis, and countries are shown on the horizontal axis.

With your introduction and overview complete, the next thing you need to do is talk about two trends. 

How to Talk about the first Bar Chart Trend

With this Bar Chart, it makes sense to talk about men as the first trend and women as the second trend.

Start the paragraph by identifying the trend and then add details that support your statement. Your final presentation about your first trend might look like this:

In all three countries the number of employed men exceeded that of women with Sweden having the highest rate of male employment – approximately 80% in 2005, followed by South Korea with 70% and Canada with 60%. By 2015, Canada had seen the greatest rise to 70%, Sweden had revealed an equal and concurrent drop, and South Korea’s employed men had risen by a mere 5%.

How to Talk about the second Bar Chart Trend

With your introduction, overview, and first trend complete, the next thing you need to do is talk about your second trend – men. 

Just as you did with the first paragraph, start by identifying the trend and then add details that support your statement. Ultimately, your presentation about your second trend might look like this:

The proportion of employed women was lower than men in all of the countries during both years. It was below 50% everywhere in 2005, but the figures had risen by 2015. By then, over half of Canadian and Swedish women were working. South Korea’s numbers were significantly lower, rising from 30% in 2005 to 35% in 2015

How to Draw Concluding Remarks

Your concluding remark may be very much like your overview – just make sure you use different words! It might look like this:

In conclusion, we can see that while all three countries witnessed an increase in employed women, South Korea was the only country where over twice as many men as women were employed during both years.

Your final response might sound like this:

This video provides more tips for How to talk about a Bar Chart in CAEL Speaking Task 3

More CAEL Preparation Lessons and Practice

For step-by-step instructions for CAEL Speaking Task 3, please check these pages:

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Pie Chart

Speaking Task 3 Practice Questions

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How Long Should my Response Be?

As part of familiarizing yourself with How to talk about a CAEL Bar Chart in Speaking Task 3,  you need to know how long your response should be and how much time you have to talk about it. You have about 1 minute to prepare your response, and 2 minutes to talk about it.

You must finish within those two minutes, so it’s a lot easier to get everything in and get a good score if you follow a basic format.

A Word About Paraphrasing

Practice, Practice, Practice. Paraphrase, don’t Parrot!

Paraphrasing is a key component of your score in the response to CAEL Speaking Task 3. It’s well worth spending some time practicing this skill.

Paraphrasing means saying the same thing in your own words. it does not mean substituting a couple of synonyms for the words in the statement.

Although you can use synonyms, it’s probably easiest to work with a possessive. Identifying which word you can use as a possessive forces you to rephrase the statement in a way that expresses the same meaning but differently.

In this Bar Chart Task, I’ve used a possessive for ‘men and women’. “Percentages of men and women in employment” has become “men’s and women’s employment rates”.

Practice, Practice, Practice. Paraphrase, don’t Parrot!