The Writing Task 1 of the IELTS Academic test requires you to write a summary of at least 150 words in response to a particular graph (bar, line, or pie graph), table, chart, or process (how something works, how something is done). This task tests your ability to select and report the main features, to describe and compare data, identify significance and trends in factual information, or describe a process.

Major notion

• IELTS recommend you spend no more than 20 minutes on writing task-one

• The number of words should be at least 150 and/or above, no official upper word limit, but IELTS students better control the amount of content less than 300 in order to make the examiner feel relax and comfort which means you will have a higher chance to get an appropriate score.

• Marking criteria

  1. Task achievement
  2. Coherence and Cohesion
  3. Vocabulary
  4. Grammar

• Question types

  1. Bar chart
  2. Line graph
  3. Pie chart
  4. Table
  5. Map
  6. Diagram/Process
  7. etc.

How-To

• Analyse the graph
  First, you need to get an overview of the graph, chart, or diagram that you will describe. Looking for the general trends, changes, and key features to get an idea of how you will structure the information. The key task in this step is to find the general pattern of the given chart and group the data by certain features, which will be used for writing the paragraph 1 and paragraph 2

• Task-one Structure

  • Introduction
    The main task of the introduction is to paraphrase the given question.
  • Overview
    Write the general picture of the given chart, the main trends.
  • Detail of paragraphs one and two
    Group the given data by some feature. Then describe each feature.
    Usually, there should be 1-3 paragraphs in the body part.

Conclusion

• Remember that the purpose of Academic Task 1 is to test your ability to distinguish and describe the changes and trends you see on the graph.

• If you think that there is not enough information on the graph to write 150 words: don't panic! Write in detail about every single alteration and support your writing with a lot of data.

• If you think that there is too much information on the graph: also don't panic! Don't ornately depict each change on the graph, but try to see a few main trends instead.