IELTS Writing Task 1

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In IELTS Writing Task 1 Academic you have to describe a graph or a chart, a map/room
layout or a process. Your written work has to be at least 150 words long. You have about
20 minutes to complete the task. Here you will find useful phrases, techniques, tips and
examples of IELTS Academic Writing Task 1.

This page is about IELTS Writing task 1 Academic. For IELTS Writing task 1 General click
here.

Contents

1. Line Graph
– Line Graph Description Example
– Description Vocabulary
2. Chart (Bar chart/pie chart)
– Bar Chart Description Example
3. IELTS Writing Task 1 Vocabulary
4. Process Description
– Process description example
5. IELTS Writing Task 1 Assessment criteria
6. Extra Tips

This task is intended to check your ability to see main trends and provide a description of
data you are given, to compare it with other information, to highlight changes or to
describe a process. All in all there are five distinct types of tasks:

Line graph requires to describe changes in the graph over a period of time
Bar chart and pie chart tasks are about comparing numbers that you are given
Process description involves describing the sequence of stages involved in a
process
Map and room layout description of features and objects’ relative position and
respective changes over time

Line Graph

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 IELTS Task 1 Graph

The graph shows the change of average salaries in various spheres of employment in the
US over a period of 40 years.

Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, make
comparisons.

NB: The numbers I have used here are fictional and in no way reflect the actual salaries
in their respective industries. Do your own research if you are interested in real salary
figures.

We will be using this graph to go over the basics of IELTS Line Graph. Description of bar
charts, pie charts and tables aren’t much different.

Understanding the main idea

First and foremost, you have to get the main idea of the graph.
Try to understand the key features of the graph. What does it show? What numbers are
the biggest? Are there any trends?

You are encouraged to use your pen to circle and underline the main features of the
graph.
Ideally you should be able to find one dominant and one or two secondary trends (if there
are any).

General tips on describing a graph

Do not try to analyse or explain everything in the graph

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 Try to establish the main trend or trends
Group the data

Study the graph above. Print it and don’t hesitate to make notes on it. Circle the important
parts — how trends begin and end, sudden changes, low and high points, differences
between trends and differences over periods of time.

The graph shows salary dynamics in various spheres over a period of 40 years.
Here are the main ideas that we can point out:

Salaries in IT and engineering had been increasing

Salaries in IT had displayed most prominent rise over the whole period
Despite fluctuation, salary in sports had been higher than the other two spheres
Salaries in sports witnessed a sharp decline in the year 2000

Once you have established the main trends, it is time to group them. Grouping
information makes it easier to structure logically as well as read. The example of grouping
data can be seen in the sample writing below.

IELTS Writing Task 1 Vocabulary

As you are going to be describing certain changes and processes you will need to use
vocabulary that denotes those changes. In order to avoid word repetition it is a good idea
to memorise as many such words and phrases as you can.

Verbs of movement, up (preposition) – Verbs of movement, down (preposition)

usage – usage
Climbed (to) – neutral Fell (by/to) – neutral
Went up (by) – neutral Dwindled (by/to) – neutral
Increased (to/by/-fold1) – neutral Subside (to) – neutral
Rose (to/by) – neutral Declined (by/to) – neutral
Skyrocketed (to) – strong, inf. Pitched (at) – neutral
Gained (no preposition) – neutral Decreased (by/to) – neutral
Recovered (to) – after a previous fall Dropped (by/to) – strong
Shot up (no preposition) – strong, inf. Sank (to) – strong
Surged (no preposition) – strong Plummeted (no preposition) – strong
Collapsed (no preposition) – strong

No change in the graph Tops and Bottoms

Remained constant/unchanged/stable Peaked (at)
etc. Reached a peak (of)
Leveled out (at) Topped (at)
Evened out (at) Bottomed (at)
Stabilised (at) Reached the bottom (at)

Verbs: Indicating Synonyms for “number”

To show Mark
To display Level
To demonstrate Volume
To experience (as in “to go through”) High/low (to reach a new high/low)
To boast (about high figures) Point

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 Examples: words and prepositions Adverbs and intensifiers
From 1990 to 2000 Slightly (weak)
Over the next decade Gradually (weak)
Went up/down by a quarter Marginally (weak)
Increased twofold Considerably (strong)
Reduced to 100,000 Dramatically (strong)
During the next twenty years Drastically (strong)
Over the whole period in the graph Sharply (strong)
Steeply (strong)
Abruptly (strong)

1. Twofold – twice, threefold – three times and so on

Remember: reusing the same expressions over and over again will reduce your lexical
resource mark.

Now we will use these words and expressions to describe our line graph.

IELTS Line Graph Description Example

The graph presents overtime changes of the amount of money people were earning in
three different industries over the period of 1970 to 2010

The industries of IT and engineering both displayed gradual increase over the whole
graph period. While engineers’ salary growth was marginal, going from 55 to 70 thousand
over the course of 40 years, the paycheck of IT workers showed a much more
pronounced increase from 35 to 100 thousand in the same period. Both industries
experienced no downward movement in their salary figures.

The area of professional sports showed slight fluctuation in numbers during the period
from 1970 to 2000. Despite that, it still remained the highest paying occupation
throughout the whole graph with a peak salary of 145 thousand in the year 2000. Over
the next decade the numbers sank, reaching 110 thousand mark.

In conclusion, IT industry showed the fastest growing salary figures and engineering had
the slowest change in pay. Despite of sports salary decline in 2000, it still remained the
highest paying occupation of the three.

(171 words)

I want you to pay attention to the words in bold. They are examples of synonyms usage to
get a higher lexical resource score (show-display-experience-present; numbers-
figures-mark; industry-job-occupation). Underlined fragments are examples of words
and phrases from the graph vocabulary table.

When writing your introductory paragraph you may be tempted to simply copy the task
description. Don’t – the copied part will not be counted towards your total number of
words. Instead, paraphrase the task.

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Original: The graph below shows the change of median salaries in various spheres of
employment in the US over a period of 40 years

Paraphrased: The graph presents the overtime changes of the amount of money
people were earning in three different industries…

IT and engineering are grouped and described in the first body paragraph because they
display similar dynamics. As it was said before, you only have to mention graph features
that stand out the most – minimums and maximums, turning points, pattern deviations.

Paragraph two is dedicated to sports careers because the chart behaves in a different
way and the salaries are considerably higher there despite of the end-graph plunge. Both
the plunge and the fluctuation are worth noting in your writing, although this doesn’t mean
that you have to put down the number for every fluctuation swing.

Conclusion can be a brief comparison, an overview of the salary dynamics. Again, it’s
worth grouping industries with similar figures as I did. Try to make your summary at least
two sentences long, though it can be quite difficult to come up with a relevant follow-up
sentence. If you find yourself at a loss for the second sentence, just paraphrase the
introduction and add a generalising statement that refers to the graph.

Chart Comparison
This task focuses on juxtaposing, or comparing the chart data. The main difference
between line graph and chart comparison is that there is no dynamics in the latter.
Instead you match different numbers against each other. These number can represent
many things — city population, prices, market shares.

Below is the task that we will use as an example (a bar chart):

You should spend about 20 minutes on this task

The chart below shows the market share of mobile phones in each country in 2015.

Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features and making
comparisons.

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In order to keep your writing under 150 words, you have to group data. The data
presented in this chart could be grouped in two different ways:

1. By country (UK and USA have pretty similar statistics, Germany and China are alike
too)
2. By platform (iOS, Android and Windows)

For this particular chart I would recommend the second option. The reason for this is that
grouping by country would be difficult – the data in this graph is very diverse. Grouping by
platform is easier as the trends are more obvious.

Grouping by platform will require 3 body paragraphs, one for each brand. The order of
paragraphs should relate to the importance of its respective brand. As Android’s presence
is the largest, it makes sense to dedicate Paragraph One to its data. Then come iOS and
Windows in Paragraphs Two and Three respectively.

Choosing to have three body paragraphs means that our description has to be very brief.
Make sure you read about keeping your narrative concise.

IELTS Bar Chart Description Example

The chart described below shows the mobile phone market situation around the world.
The data is structured to indicate the share of all three major mobile platforms in each
mentioned country.

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Android devices are dominant in all the countries presented, reaching the highest mark of
91% in Brazil. Mobile devices of this brand constitute more than half of the total market
share with the lowest figure of 51.5% in the UK.

Mobile devices based on iOS are the second popular with the highest presence figures in
the US and the UK with 43% and 40% respectively. The lowest mark of iOS-based
devices is registered in Brazil, where it gets as low as 4%, outperformed by the third most
popular brand – Windows.

Windows-operated gadgets are the least widespread with mere 9% of the market in
Germany, 7.5% in the UK and only 1% in China

Overall, the market is divided among the brand unevenly with Android towering over the
other two brands. Even though iOS-based units have a substantial presence in some
countries it is dwarfed by the leader’s figures. Windows platform numbers are far lower
than that of its competitors.

(172 words)

In this text I went slightly over the word limit. You are not penalised for that. However,
keep in mind that more words mean more time spent on the text and more potential
mistakes in it.

What you should be worried about is falling short of the 150 mark – texts that are
seriously underlength (less than 145 words — a rough but sensible estimate, not the
official figure) get reduced score. If you struggle to reach the 150 mark then you are doing
something wrong, either missing a trend or not giving enough information about the
graph. Usually keeping it under 150 is the real challenge that, however, can be made
much easier by writing in a more concise manner.

Process Description
In IELTS Writing Task 1: Process Description you write about a process that can be
shown in the form of either flowchart or picture. This task focuses on your ability to group
smaller stages and to describe their sequence, or how they go one after another.

We shall use the task below for illustration.

The picture below illustrates how olive oil is made.

Write a report for your tutor describing the production process.

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 source: wikipedia.org

Links for bigger pictures: 1280px, 2980px

There are several challenges that set this type of IELTS Writing Task from others. As you
will be describing processes — shown as a diagram or a flowchart — you will have to
deal with the following difficulties:

Grouping the process stages. It is necessary that you group your information –
this will allow for easier paragraphing and make your text more readable. There
should be at least two stages, three is the optimum figure. We will look into this in
the example task below.

Sequencing – tenses and vocabulary. Any process involves several things that
happen one after another. To get more points for grammar and vocabulary, it is
important to use various ways of expressing this order of actions. See article about
tenses for more information.
Description vocabulary. To describe a process you have to know what certain
involved components are called and what they do. Again, look at the example task
below for clarification.

Looking at the example task we can divide the process into three larger stages:
preparation, processing and refining. If you want, you can combine two last stages into
one.

Unlike other IELTS Writing Task 1 tasks, this one doesn’t require a separate paragraph for
conclusion. Your writing ends with the last stage of the process description. Nevertheless,
you are still required to write an introductory paragraph that briefly states the topic and
purpose of your writing.

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As you will be writing to your tutor, your style should be strictly formal. Do not use any
contracted forms, informal expressions. Refer to the list of formal and informal language
for further reference.

IELTS Process Description Example

The production of olive oil can be divided into three major stages. The first stage is
cleaning and preparing the olives. Stages two and three process and refine the product
respectively.

During the first stage the olives are poured into a funnel that sends them on the escalator,
lifting the fruit to the washing machine. These get washed and then, with the help of the
moving band transported to the leaf separation device.

Ready-to-use olives are then pushed into the crusher that turns them into pulp which is
mixed by the melaxer right after. The resulting substance is then sent to decanter, where
the pulp is filtered and turned into liquid. At the same time the residual pomice is
produced during the filtering.

The final stage is refining the resulting liquid. Said liquid is poured into the oil polisher,
where water and oil are separated. The water is discarded into sewage, while the clean
oil is put in containers.

(159 words)

In this text I went with the three body paragraph structure because of three distinct stages
that comprise the process.

Introduction clearly stated that by naming all three stages. It is good practice to make
your reader aware of what the text is about before he continues to the body paragraphs.

Now look at the marked words. Underlined parts of text are verbs that describe
transitions, or changes that take place during the course of the process. Do not resort to a
couple of verbs like “it goes to” and “it moves”. In this particular text pay attention to the
use of passive tense. Olives do not move by themselves, they are moved.

Words in bold are used for sequencing — order of things that take place in the picture.
There aren’t that many synonyms for such words so whenever possible you should try to
omit them, using the context as an indicator of what happens after what. Take a look at
the first body paragraph. No sequence words were used there, but the order of stages is
clear from context.

IELTS Writing Assessment criteria

1.Task achievement
Task one, Academic: How logically and clearly you group and present the trends, stages
or differences in the task material; how clearly and appropriately you illustrate all of the
points required by the task.

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Task two: How fully address the ideas, mentioned in the task; how well you develop your
position on the question, how appropriately you use points and ideas to support your
opinion, their relevance to the task.

2. Coherence and cohesion

Task one and two: How clearly and logically you sequence(organize) your essay; how
diversely and appropriately you use cohesive devices; how you use paragraphing to
structure your essay.

3. Lexical resource
Task one and two: How varied and flexible your vocabulary is; How precise and accurate
your word choice is, including such aspects as word register and style; How good your
spelling and word-formation skills are.

4. Grammatical range and accuracy

Task one and two: How diverse your choice of various grammatical structure is and how
appropriately you use them.

IELTS Writing Task 1: Don’ts

Don’t try to analyze the figures in the graph. You are not required to share your
vision on the trends and directions they take. Doing so won’t get you any points, but
will eat up the word limit. All you have to do is describe what is going on in a clear,
easy to understand manner. Your opinion can be voiced later in Writing Task 2.
Don’t try writing a draft version of your essay first. You wont have time to write both
the draft and fair copy. Instead, you simply go through your essay after you have
finished writing it and correct all the mistakes or imperfections you find. You will not
be penalized for self-correcting as long as it is easy to make out what you have
written or corrected.
Don’t write more than you should. As it was mentioned above, more writing means
more mistakes that are likely to pop up. Unless you really have to, refrain from
going over the set word limit of 150 words in Task 1 and 250 words in Task 2.
Don’t waste your time counting your words. A better way to do that is to count how
many words you have in one line and then multiply it by the number of lines. It will
give you a rough, but reliable number.
Don’t be biased towards info in the graph. That includes both personal attitude that
was mentioned above and fair distribution of text space. Body paragraphs should be
of fairly equal size. Do not let one body paragraph overpower the others in volume.

IELTS Task 1 Writing Tips

Pay attention to prepositions. There is a difference between “decreased by 50” and
“decreased to 50”. In the first one it went down by 50, so if it was 500 it became
450. In the second one it became 50 no matter how big the original number was.
To avoid repeating more colloquial expressions refer to this list of synonyms for
most overused words.

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If you write about something that has no relation to the topic it is possible that these
words will not be counted towards your total number of words. Stay on topic!
To have more idea about structuring your writing and other aspects of the written
part of your English exam, see this article on essay writing.

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