IELTS Academic Task 1

ScottsEnglish · February 2016

The IELTS Academic Task 1 question will be a graph, table or diagram.

You must write 150 words in 20 minutes. Most people cannot do this even in their native language!

A most important place to start: Understand how you must write your answer! Here is what you must do:

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

summarise to express the most important facts (ie main features) in a short and clear form
report to describe to someone (the examiner) what you see
compare to examine and look for the differences between two or more things

It took IELTS several years to come up with this sentence. Read it 10 or more times. Take the time to fully understand what you are being asked to do now...not during the test.

Here are some more helpful tips to help you with IELTS Task 1:

Write a short introduction by paraphrasing the question (i.e. rewrite the question in your own words).
Make sure you understand the graph, table or diagram. Be clear about what you're describing.
Be sure to give a summary (hint: look at the 'big picture' ask yourself, "What’s happening overall?" There’s no need to mention any numbers in this part.)
Try to use a variety of sentence structures and vocabulary.
Write in clear, separate paragraphs. Leave one, blank line between paragraphs to make it clear to the examiner where one paragraph ends and another begins.
Describe or compare only the main features.
Describe specific details. Use the numbers in the chart, table or graph to help you describe the key points.

A couple of things to avoid:

Don't try to describe every single detail – focus only on the main features.
Don't give reasons or your opinions about the information - ONLY describe what's on the graph, table or diagram.

For key vocabulary you need to successfully negotiate this part of the Writing Test, click here.