Five great tips for IELTS academic writing task 1

1. Make sure your overview is really clear

The first of our 5 tips for IELTS academic writing task 1 is that you need to give an overview and it needs to be really clear. An overview is a short summary of the main trends or features of the task. Use a word like ‘Overall’ to introduce it, showing the reader that the information that follows is a summary. Don’t include lots of detail or data in the overview, because this can make it less clear. Usually numbers belong in the body of the text. The only exception is things like totals, because you normally don’t have a good place to put these in the body. Also, a total is basically a summary of the numbers in the task, so an overview which summarises the whole task is a great place to put totals.

2. Put the overview in the introduction

Put your overview at the beginning of your essay! We recommend putting it as the last sentence of the introduction. Lots of students leave the overview until last, almost like a conclusion. Remember, it isn’t a conclusion, it’s a summary. If you read any business or academic documents, you’ll see that usually the summary (called an ‘abstract’ in research papers) comes at the beginning, so it’s not bad structure to give the overview early.

The problem with writing the overview last comes when you run out of time. If you don’t give a clear overview, your score for task achievement is instantly limited to band 5. If you write the overview last, you may forget to include it or not have time to write it clearly. This can be really bad for your score, especially if your writing is good and you need to get a higher band score!

3. Don’t report everything

Tip 3 of our 5 tips IELTS academic writing task 1 is about choosing what to include in your report. This means that you need to find the most important data and describe it. Often students give every figure on the chart or graph. They may get really detailed when describing a diagram, map or process. Make sure you don’t do this, because it can limit your task achievement to band 5!

For the data tasks, look for the most important figures. These will be things like maximums or minimums. Once you give these, the reader knows that all of the other data fall within that range. Then, try to identify similarities, big differences, or major changes. Remember, you are trying to describe the trends

With diagrams, maps and processes, make sure that you identify the main features or stages. Don’t get too detailed and focus on things that aren’t really relevant to the completion of a process or the function of a machine. With maps, try to focus on the key differences and group things, for example by describing things according to where they are on the map.

Occasionally, you will get a task where you have a problem reaching the word count. If this is the case, you may include things that you wouldn’t for tasks with a lot more information, so your judgement is important too.

4. Learn different ways to report data

Lots of people learn one or two sentence structures to give numbers or describe features for task 1. This can be a problem because you need to show that you can report data or features in lots of different ways. If you always use the same structure to report information, it will affect your coherence and cohesion score.

A really good way to see if you’re repeating structures is looking at the prepositions you’re using when you give numbers. If every number is given after the same few prepositions (from… to… are the usual culprits!), then you are being too mechanical in the way you report data. Another sign to look for is the position of data or features in a sentence. If they’re always given at the end, you are probably being too repetitive.

There should be lots of comparison and lots of different sentence structures for reporting data. Try varying the sentence structure, and don’t always rely on the same phrases to introduce data or features of a process, diagram or map.

5. Think about the vocabulary you’re using

You need to be really careful with vocabulary, especially with data containing tasks. The first problem students have is that they don’t describe the subject of the task. For example, if a graph shows the consumption of meat and fish, lots of people forget to include the word ‘consumption of’. They say things like ‘fish went down’, or ‘chicken remained stable’. You probably won’t have to talk about stable chickens or descending fish in your task 1. Instead, you need to say ‘The amount of fish consumed went down’ or ‘The consumption of chicken remained stable’. This is also better for your grammar.

The other problem students have is using the wrong vocabulary for different tasks. If two pie charts show the number of students studying different degrees in 1980 and 2000, students often start using line graph vocabulary, such as ‘The number of students studying history increased rapidly’ or ‘Enrolment in biology courses declined steadily’. This vocabulary is WRONG. You don’t know what happened in between 1980 and 2000, so avoid giving vocabulary that describe the speed or pattern of a change! ‘In comparison to 1980, there was a significant decrease in the number of students studying biology in 2000’ or ‘By 2000, the enrolment on history courses had increased noticeably compared to 1980’. Here, you are describing the size of the difference, not the speed or pattern of change!