Five essential writing skills for Academic Task 1

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In this tutorial we look at:

1. Essential language for academic task 1: comparison, change, process, and topic specific vocabulary for the IELTS exam.
2. Task response, identifying trends, overall ideas, maximums, minimums, patterns and changes. BIG TIP GROUPING IS ESSENTIAL AND LISTING IS ABYSMAL!
3. Transforming graph labels into grammatical sentences - key skill (explained below)
4. Superlatives (explained in details below).
5. Paraphrasing.

Transforming graph labels into grammatical sentences - key skill (explained below)

To compare data from a graph or table, it is necessary to create noun phrases by transforming the labels from the diagram (which will usually be single words, or in ungrammatical note-form) into full grammatical phrases which agree grammatically with the rest of your sentence.

For example, we see in the graph:

University Educated (18%)

This label needs to be transformed to fit into a grammatical sentence, e.g.:

The percentage of university educated people (18%) was almost equal to the percentage of non-university educated people (21%).

Hair colours in Acme Corp:
Brown 21%
Blonde 18%
Black 12%
Ginger 49%

The percentage of blonde workers (18%) was almost equal to the percentage of brown haired employees (21%).

Drinking Preferences in Eastern Europe 2015
Filtered 16%
Un-filtered 14%
Purified 40%
Mineralised 30%

Again these labels need to be transformed to fit into a grammatical sentence, e.g.:

The percentage of Eastern Europeans who prefer un-filtered water (14%) was almost equal to the percentage of those who prefer filtered water.

Eating Preferences in Eastern Europe 2015
Paleo 16%
Vegan 14%
Carnivore 40%
Vegetarian 30%

The percentage of vegans (14%) was almost equal to the percentage of those following a paleo diet (16%).

Bonus tip:
Find a similarity

The percentage of university educated people (18%) was almost equal to the percentage of non-university educated people (21%).

Superlatives - the basics (a quick recap)

If we use a superlative adjective (‘the most popular country for tourists’) then there is obviously only one (or one group) of the thing we are talking about.
There is one country which is the most popular in the graph, and because it’s clear to the listener which one we mean, we usually use the:

In 2018, Germany saw the largest growth in exports.

The largest fraction of the pie chart is the foreign section, representing over 20% of the total.

The most significant fraction of the pie chart is the imports section, representing almost 90% of the total.

The most fluctuations can be seen in the year 1998, ranging from a low of 20 to a high of 100.

Although the overseas section is the largest, the smallest section belongs to the domestic sector at just 11%

Remember, we don’t use 'the' when there is a possessive:

Russia’s best year is clearly 2010 when exports rose to well over 300,000 tonnes.

Regarding cereals, wheat has its largest surge in popularity in the final quarter of 2018, reaching just over 500,000.

China’s most productive year was in 2010, when it almost reached 900,000.

Take a look at sample academic task 1 essays to help you with your IELTS preparation and our IELTS writing evaluation.

More Useful Task 1 Tutorials: