IELTS Writing Task 1 Academic For Beginners in 2026

you've just found the Ultimate Guide to task one academic writing this is the longest most detailed most comprehensive guide to task one anywhere on the internet it will help you succeed by sharing with you the tips and strategies and structures that only band 8 and N students really understand we'll also share one simple structure that you can use for any task one question and walk you through step by step exactly how to use it so without further Ado let's get into it tip number one is to understand what the task requires you to do which is simply describe information say exactly what you see why are they testing you on this because when you move to a new country you're going to have to look at information and then convey that information to other people do not make it more complicated than that many many students will spend you know half an hour looking at the data to find you know this thing within the data that is not really there the students that get a bond eight the students that get a bond n look at the data pretty quickly pick out the key things and then put those key things on paper do not over complicated they are not going to give you higher marks for doing some data analysis and finding something there that no one has ever find before that's not what they're testing it is not a PhD the pieces it is just testing your English level tip number two is to do task two first do not do task one first why is this well if you do task two first you're more likely to get it done in under 40 minutes that leaves you 20 minutes to focus on task one and if you only have 20 minutes at the end what that does is it forces you to simplify everything because you only have 20 minutes that means that you will analyze the data quickly and you will pick out only the main key features and then you will write about them if you do task one first the opposite is going to happen students that do task one first tend to overanalyze the data make it more complicated than it needs to be write way too much and then they have messed up task one and they have also messed up task two because task two is requires 40 minutes for you to focus on and get a good score so if you do task two first get it done in 40 minutes then you will force yourself to do task one in under 20 minutes and you'll do it the right way you'll do it the way that bond8 and bond n students do it which is within 20 minutes in a simple straightforward way tip number three is have one structure for all of the different types of questions that might come up this is going to do a few different different things number one when you're dealing with a complicated complex situation you want to remove as much complexity and as much stress as possible so if you have to learn separate strategies and separate structures for you know eight or nine different questions that might come up that is just adding in way too much complexity into an already complex thing keep it simple by what learning one structure and applying that to every single question that comes up this makes your job easy to do during your preparation time and it makes your job much easier on test day and anything that removes complexity and makes your job easier whilst at the same time improving your score is a great thing tip number four is to practice overviews and writing overviews more than anything else all right there are other things that you need to do but if you really nail the overview it makes everything much much much easier so what you should do is go on to our website go on to is advantage.com I can't speak for other websites but there you will find real Bond n samples and the bond n samples will have Bond nine overviews in them find where they are find the actual question but don't read the overview don't read the sample what you're going to do is get as many as you need as many of those questions as you need and then look at the data and try to write the perfect overview once you have done that then you can compare your overview with our overview if it's pretty much the same then you've done a great job but if there are some differences in the key features then you can go and look and think where did you go wrong how can you improve in the future and if you use that system over and over and over again then overviews become pretty simple tip number five is to use approxim ations when you are describing data in the details paragraphs so often you will get charts for example like a line graph for example and it will be very difficult for you to see exactly what the data is and this leads to two problems number one you spend way too much time thinking about what that is and problem number two students often will try and write the exact figure and that exact figure will be wrong so for example you could write around 2,500 or just over 2,500 or approximately 2,500 all of these are going to be correct but if you write 2,497 and it's not really that number then that is wrong so again it's about doing things that make your job easier and lead to higher scores tip number six is something not to do do not consider your opinion or why this data is happening students will often look at data and start to think H I think this is happening because of this reason or H this might have been because of this thing they're not asking you to interpret the data they are asking you to convey the data just say what you see so if you start to think about why and you start to formulate opinions it does two bad things number one you're using a brain power that you don't need to use up think of your brain as a battery all right there is only a certain amount of charge in that battery if you are thinking about lots and lots of different things that you don't need to think about on test day it is draining that battery the second problem is it doesn't ask you to give your opinion so if you give it you're wasting time and you are actually lowering your score for task achievement because they didn't ask you for your opinion they asked you to Simply summarize the data so don't do things you don't need to do don't drain your battery and don't give the examiners things that they're not looking for give them exactly what they're looking for tip number seven have your writing checked by a real professional that could be me that could be another teacher who is a real professional they were an ex examiner they know what they're doing if you do this you're going to save yourself a huge amount of time and money because you were dramatically increasing your chances of getting the score that you need you are definitely and I say this because I nearly 20 years of experience looking at these things every single student that we work with no matter how much preparation they put in no matter how intelligent they are are making mistakes silly mistakes that they are unaware of I guarantee this is happening with you and the more of these mistakes you make the lower your score and they are so easy to fix but you can't see them so hire a real professional to look at your writing point out your mistakes and then you won't make those on test day tip number eight is all about word count the appropriate word count and how you should consider word count when you are practicing so The Sweet Spot is between 150 and 200 don't go below 150 you haven't put enough on paper and if you're going over 200 you're just writing way way way too much so in between 150 and 200 if you're 2011 or 202 don't freak out about it it's generally The Sweet Spot but what you should be doing is if you're doing the paper based test use the real answer sheets and what that will allow you to do is it will allow you to eyeball judge exactly where you are when you're writing what we get students to do is kind of count what does 50 of your words look like so if you have three blocks of those 50 that means that you are around 150 words you probably probably need to write a little bit more so it allows you to quickly judge your word count you shouldn't be counting every single word on test day you just don't have time to do it so using that technique with the paper base test will help you do that the second thing you can do is if you're doing the computer-based test is don't have the word c there because when you're practicing and you're constantly looking at the word c it means you're focusing more on the word c than actually doing what you should be doing Turn the word kind off and get used to turning it on only at the end and what that will do is it will train you to know when you have gone over 150 words cuz if you are finishing and every time you're at 130 140 then you can analyze it and see where you need to add in a little bit more detail or if at the end you're at like 250 300 then you can recognize that and recog ize that you're writing about way too many things number nine is all about paraphrasing we will go into more detail on paraphrasing in the rest of this video but what you can do is just get real practice tests and paraphrase all of them all right and what you will do is if you look at it paraphrase it check the grammar check the vocabulary is correct and then you will start to see patterns so you could actually get you know get a book and just have all of your paraphrases beside each other or in a Word document whatever you want to do but you'll start to see the same words come up again and again and again and again you can't do this with task two but you can do this with task one you know for example chart is going to come up again and again and again and then what you can do is you can note down these common words that come up and just add in the correct synonyms this is going to make your job much much easier on test day because you will be able to change those words automatically without really thinking about them tip number 10 don't write everything that you see and hope for the best this is a strategy that a lot of students use hope is not a good strategy you're not going to get lucky all right what a lot of students believe is you know task two is worth double task one isn't really worth much I don't like these charts what I'll do is I'll just write as much things as they pop into my head hopefully I'll get lucky it's kind of like throwing darts at a dartboard and hoping that you hit the bullseye you probably won't instead follow the system follow the structure that we're going to teach you in the rest of this video Problem number one why do I have to do this so this problem is not to do with your linguistic ability your grammar your vocabulary nothing to do with that but it is one of the main reasons why students fail to get the score that they deserve with task one academic which is you know why do I have to do this this is stupid I don't like this and what that does is it creates a barrier to you actually learning it and doing very well in it so let me tell you a quick story when I was a teenager I hated learning French I wasn't good at it and what I always said was I have no intention of going to France why do I have to learn French I hated it my French teacher hated me and out of all the subjects that I did in school it was the only one that I didn't get an A in and that probably isn't because I'm dumb like if I got an A in every other single subject it was because of this mindset block what you need to do is remove that completely from your vocabulary from your mindset because if you keep telling yourself why am I doing this I hate this I'm not good at it you will never ever ever improve because in order to improve you're going to have to spend time working on this and in order to do that you have to see the point in it why are you doing it and there's two ways of solving that number one don't see it as describing a bunch of charts and data and processes that you're unfamiliar with and you'll never use see it as describing information and no matter what job you do in the world no matter what you will do in the future you will have to describe cribe information to other people when you move and live in an englishspeaking country so do not see it as something you hate see it as a function an everyday function of something that you are going to use cuz I guarantee no matter what you do you will have to describe information and that is all their testing Can you look at information understand it and then describe that information number two see that you have a huge advantage over other students because 99% of students hate this task and don't actually put in any effort if you change your mindset to this is just describing information and if I learn how to do it I'm going to have a better score than 99% of other students and you will then you'll be able to use it as a stepping stone to your dream life in that new country view it that way and you will remove that problem the second big problem that we see with our students is getting lost in the data spending too much time trying to understand the data there is a phrase in English paralysis by analysis paralysis means that you don't move and Analysis means that you are looking at information too much paralysis by analysis in the next part of this video we're going to show you an easy way to overcome paralysis by analysis but right now all all you have to do is be aware of it the third biggest problem is going over the time limit so for task one you will have 20 minutes and task two you will have 40 minutes what most students do is they do task one first and they go over the 20 minute Mark what that does is it does two very bad things the more time that you spend on task one generally the worse your score is going to be I know that sounds weird I know that sounds counter Inu but it is true generally the students that get the band eights the band 9es they are always under 20 minutes the second B bad thing that will happen is you will ruin your chances of getting a good score in task two because it does require at least 40 minutes in the next section we're going to show you how to always finish below 20 minutes the fourth big problem is underestimating the significance of part one what do I mean by that well what you will hear a lot of the time is that part one doesn't really matter it doesn't really contribute to your score because task two is worth double and when people hear that it's worth double what they do is they focus nearly all of their time studying for and preparing for task two but thinking of it as it's double doesn't really help because our brains are not very good at visualizing that a better way of thinking about it is what is true which is part one task one is one3 and task two is worth 2/3 if you think about it that way you'll see that 1/3 is a very very significant part students that disagree with me when I say that I say okay give me onethird of the money in your bank account or if I went into your bank account and took one3 of your money would you be okay about that it's insignificant right they're like oh no one3 is actually a huge amount more students fail writing as a whole because of part one because of task one than they do because they did badly on task two even though it's worth only a third if you do bad in it if you don't do as well in it then you're dragging down your whole score so what you need to do is prepare at least a third of your time for task one so if you have 100 hours to prepare you should be spending at least 33 or to 35 hours preparing for task one and the rest of it for task two you don't have to prepare 100 hours that is just to demonstrate the point the fifth big problem that we see is there's a huge amount of misinformation about the structure for task one academic and if there is a lot of misinformation that leads to a lot of Confusion And if you are confused on TES day then your writing will be confused because your writing is a direct reflection of your thinking confused thinking confused writing confused writing low score so what you need to do is go into the test 100% sure and certain about what you need to do and the biggest misconceptions and the biggest worries that we see are surrounding the structure about the overview some people say you need to write an overview some people say you need to write a conclus I usion some people say you should put the overview after the introduction some say it must be at the end and if you are listening to you know five different teachers telling you five different things you're going to go into the test very very confused in the rest of this video we'll show you one structure that has produced hundreds and probably more than 100 thousands of band 78 and N students just follow that structure and you will remove all of this confusion number six students being unfamiliar with the specific grammar and vocabulary required to describe data and to describe changes this isn't something that students write about every day and there are very very specific grammar and vocabulary structures that you need to be aware of don't worry all you have to do is learn them and we'll include that in the grammar and vocabulary guide for you problem number seven is writing a pure overview the overview is the most important part part of your task one report because it actually says in the markting criteria that you need to write a good clear overview to get a seven or above if we look at the official markting criteria for task one it says present a clear overview of main Trends differences or stages in other words you are going to get a bond six or a bond five if you don't write a clear overview but don't worry we'll cover that in the rest of this video Problem number eight is writing inaccurate data so you include some of the data but the data that you include is inaccurate so this normally comes not from the student being dumb and not understanding the data and cuz the data is quite straightforward normally 99% of the time it comes from time management issues or stress issues doesn't matter who you are it doesn't matter how good you are at English or how intelligent you are if you put someone under stress and rush them you know put them under time pressure they're going to make little mistakes so we're going to show you how to improve time management reduce stress and also use something called approximations to really improve the accuracy of your data later on in the video number nine is being overwhelmed with all of the different types of questions you might get line graphs you might get bar charts you might get P graphs you might get tables or a mixture of those you might get a process you might get a map and for anybody this can be completely overwhelming and how we solve this is we treat every single one of them in exactly the same way number one by understanding that all they are is just visual representations of data and information and all we have to do is convey that data to The Examiner and the second way that you can overcome this problem is by just using one structure one structure for all of the different types of charts and graphs and bar charts and whatever you get and we'll cover that in the rest of this video Problem number 10 the last problem is no one there to check your mistakes it doesn't matter who you are or how smart you are or how much preparation you put in you're guaranteed to make mistakes because we all make mistakes and I totally understand why many of you do not hire a real professional to actually check your work but let's be honest none of you are completely penniless if you want to do a test that costs $250 and you want to get on an airplane and take you to a foreign country you do have some money and which is more expensive hiring a real professional teacher to check your work and make sure that you don't fail the test or go and fail the test multiple multiple times you know it's pretty easy to figure out the answer to that question if you're going to hire someone make sure sure that they are an ex examiner and they are a real professional teacher not some clown on the internet that you know tells everybody that they're the best I teacher in the world most of them are not if you want to get oneon-one help from us and get us to check your work we do have those Services if you want but if you don't want to use us that's fine too but feel free to get in touch with us if you want our help so what we're going to do now is give you some real examples of all the different types of charts and graphs and plans and maps that you might get for task one academic and then I'm going to give you some really useful tips on how to understand these graphs really really easily they look intimidating they look complex but once you understand a few simple things they become much much easier to understand I'm going to use the real Cambridge books to show you what they actually look like I would highly recommend getting these books because not just for writing but for listening reading speaking you get the real reliable practice questions okay so the first one we're going to look at is a line graph over time so we have the question prompt and the instructions at the top here and then we have a line graph over time very very common another one that you might see is a bar chart so again we have the question up here and then we have the information here so we have bars comparing different things you might also will get a pie chart like we have here normally it will be multiple pie charts so we have two pie charts here and in this one you have six different pie charts I know that looks very intimidating don't worry we'll show you how to really easily understand these in the rest of the video you might also get multiple data sources or multiple sources of information so here we have two different pie charts and we've got a table giving us data here you could have something like this where we have two different line graphs or you could get a map or a plan as you can see here this is a plan of an airport normally it will show you a before and after this is what it looks like now this is what it is going to look like in the future and finally you might get a process normally this is to do with manufacturing or making something like here this is showing you how to make sugar and it's normally a multi-step process showing you how something is made or a process producing something and at this stage students are normally freaking out and they're like how can I answer all of these different types of question how can I understand all of this data first thing to remember that will make this much much easier is why are they putting this data into graphs why do we make line graphs bar charts pie charts so what you're doing when you make a line graph like why do we make a line graph why do we make a bar chart why do we make a pie chart we do this so that the people viewing the pie chart or whatever it is can understand the data more easily if you flip your the switch in your mind from this is really confusing and I know nothing about this to oh great it's a line graph it's a pie chart it's a bar graph this is making my life much much easier that is why we do this now if you don't believe me well think about how bar charts and L graphs are created we put raw data into an Excel spreadsheet and then that Excel spreadsheet makes a lovely presentable easy to digest graph for us imagine if they just gave you the raw data that would be terrible that would be very unfair so instead of thinking I can't understand this and I don't know anything about this think oh here they've made it easy for me to understand this thing the next thing is to understand the difference between static data and dynamic data let me explain what that means so dynamic means overtime so for example with this one this is from 2010 to 2017 this is dynamic data they're showing you the changes that happen over time now if we compare that with this bar chart this is static data it is not over time it is not showing you changes over time it is showing you a snapshot of One Moment In Time and that brings us on to the most important thing that is going to help you easily understand this graph purpose what is the purpose of making this chart or this graph in other words why did the person who made this why did they make it don't think of it as an ielt question think of it as someone has given you this to help you understand this why did they make it well let's have a look at these two graphs so the chart below shows results of a survey about people's coffee and tea buying and drinking habits in five Australian cities so we have three categories here bought fresh coffee in the last four weeks bought instant coffee in the last four weeks went to a cafe for coffee or tea in the last four weeks so the purpose of this data is twofold there's two things here one is to compare the five Australian cities so it is comparing Sydney Melbourne Brisbane Adelaide and Hobart and then within each City it is to compare these three categories of coffee or tea drinkers now let's compare that with this line graph over time this Dynamic line graph over time the graph below shows the number of tourists visiting a particular Caribbean island between 2010 and 2017 so we have visitors on cruise ships visitors staying on the island and then total so why did the person make this what is the purpose of this data well below here we have the date over time so it is to show changes over time and it is also to compare the number of people staying on cruise ships with the number of people actually staying on that land so we will show the changes over time and then compare those two categories of people so by understanding the purpose it helps us focus in hone in on what the most important data is and to understand the graph much much easier now let's have a look at something a little bit more complex so the chart below shows what anthropology graduates from one university did after finishing their undergraduate degree course the table shows the salaries of the Anthropologist in work after 5 years so this is a pie chart so what they're doing is they're showing the proportion of the different categories here so what is the purpose of showing the different proportions well we can compare all of these different things so we can just compare you know more than 50% of people were in full-time work compared to just 15% in part-time work so we are comparing those three or four or five things if we look at the table it's really comparing these three different types of employment freelance Consultants government sector and private companies and then we are comparing how much money each of those sectors can make what is the purpose of this well this is showing you how to make instant noodles in a factory not in your kitchen why would somebody make this well if somebody wanted to set up a factory making instant noodles this would be quite helpful so it is helping simplify the whole process of making noodles so instead of looking at it and going I don't know anything about noodles all I know about noodles is how to eat them this is actually trying to simplify the whole process of manufacturing instant noodles to help you understand so don't over accomplish at it just look at it it's pretty simple why would somebody make this map well they tell you exactly why they made it because they want to compare what it looked like in 2007 compared to what it looked like in 2010 you don't need to be an architect or someone who designs hospitals you just need to show the difference because that's the purpose to show the difference what's the purpose of a bar chart to compare the different categories what's the the purpose of a line graph to show changes over time what's the purpose of a pie chart to compare the different portions by understanding why they made it the purpose it becomes very very easy to understand the key things within that data and another way to simplify this whole process is to have one structure for all of the different types of graph map process doesn't matter what it is you just use one structure let's have a look at that now so for task one academic we call this our pyramid structure and it'll become clear why we use this pyramid structure in a second so if we start up here this is our first paragraph This is Our introduction and all the introduction is is a paraphrase of the question statement what do I mean by that well if you have a look here the chart below shows the percentage of households in owned and rented accommodation in England and Wales between 1918 and 2011 for your introduction all you're going to do is take this question statement not this just this bit and you're going to paraphrase it you're going to State it in your own words so that it means the same thing using different words if that sounds complicated don't worry about it we're going to show you in more detail how to do that later in the video now we move on to paragraph 2 this is our overview and an overview is simply the 2 to four could be two could be three could be four most important things so you look at the map or the plan or the bar chart or the line graph and you pick out the two or three or four most important most significant features of that information and you put it in your overview you do not include any detail you do not include any data and there are two ways that we teach students how to think about this we'll go into more detail later in the video but just to go go through this very quickly if I put a gun to your head and said you can only pick two or three or four of the most important things about the data gun to your head you have to do that what would you pick or another way to think about it a less violent way to think about it would be if you were writing for a newspaper for example so often you will see newspaper headlines and what the whole article is based on is a bar chart or a line graph or some kind of data that has come out recently and because people who read newspapers don't want to sift through all this data what the headline normally does is it gives people the most important thing one or two or three most important things most striking thing about the data so if you were writing for a newspaper what would the headline be or if you were giving this to your boss so if you were working for the CEO of a big company they employ you to do the work for them they're you're not going to send them a bar chart you're not going to send them a line graph you're going to send them a line graph and say so you don't have to read this and understand it here are the most important points think about it that way that makes the overview much simpler okay so paragraph 1 paragraph 2 then we have details one and we have details two so it's a four paragraph structure introduction overview details one details 2 and this is where you go into detail on the main features so you're not writing everything what you're doing is you're summarizing the main features the key features you're going into detail on those in the details paragraphs why do we do that because for every question it always says summarize the information by selecting and Reporting the main features and make comparisons where relevant every every question says exactly the same thing it does not say write everything that you see summarize select and then report the key main features and that is why it is the shape of a pyramid the introduction has no detail whatsoever it's just one sentence introducing what the thing is about overview is a little bit longer but again no detail it only contains the most important features it is an overview of those and then in the details paragraphs then we go into more detail it is longer we include data we include more specific things one question we often get asked or two questions really is no conclusion no you do not put a conclusion for task one academic a conclusion is a summary of your opinion there is no opinion here you are simply reporting exactly what you see it has no opinion there is no summary of opinion therefore there is no con conclusion this confusion comes from I hate to say it but it's true there are a lot of teachers out there that don't really know what they're doing and they get confused between an overview and a conclusion and then they tell their students oh you must put a conclusion here because they're getting mixed up between overview and conclusion and they're getting mixed up between task one and task two so it just creates a lot of confusion and a lot of failure don't do that it is going to lead to failure a lot of students also ask about the position of the overview like should I put it here or should I put it at the end it really doesn't matter what matters is the quality of your overview what features do you pick what do you put into your overview doesn't really matter the position of that overview on test day we want to minimize the number of things that we are thinking about so that we can focus on the most important things don't go into the test thinking about conclusions and overview use and where should I put it just learn one thing memorize it and do it on test day that is going to minimize the amount of thinking that you have to do and it will allow you to really focus and really think about the things that need thinking about so what I'm going to do now is use this structure apply it to a real question and show you step by step how to write a band n answer so the first thing we're going to do something that'll a lot of people Overlook is read the question and think about the meaning of the question so don't look at the data first that will cause overwhelm it will cause confusion just break everything down into baby steps so let's start off with baby step number one the question so it states here the graph below shows the number of tourists visiting a particular Caribbean island between 2010 and 2017 summarize the information by selecting and Reporting the main featur features and make comparisons where relevant each question will always have two parts for task one it will have the question prompt and then it will have summarize the information by selecting and Reporting the main features and make comparisons where relevant this bit here this never changes this is always the same this will be different what we need to do is read this and understand everything so the graph below shows the number of tourists so pretty straight forward most people who are hoping to get a 7 eight or n will understand that visiting a particular Caribbean island so even if you don't know what the Caribbean is or you've never heard of the Caribbean or the Caribbean as they say in America it's just number of people visiting an island if you see a word and you don't understand don't freak out and be like oh my God I don't understand this I'm going to fail you don't actually need to know what Caribbean means in order to get a bad nine for this question then between 2010 and 2017 so we understand everything that's going on we can move on to the next step the next step is don't look at the actual data look at the information surrounding the graph or whatever it is so we have the title here we have the xaxis we have the y axis and then we have the key here so it's really important that we read this and understand it now we're taking a long time to do this right now but if you get into the habit of following these steps you'll be able to do these pretty much instantly on test day it's all about practice and making this a habit so number of tourists visiting a Caribbean Island 2010 2017 so there's nothing that is different here if there was something a little bit different we would have to look at it again maybe think about it what is the difference between this but here it's exactly the same information millions of tourists so it's saying one so we're not going to write one tourist or you know 3.5 tourists 3 and a half people didn't visit the island it's 3 and A2 million all right so millions of visitors we need to put that into our answer when we're writing about it next we have 2010 to 2017 so this shows that it is a dynamic chart it is showing change over time then we need to look at the key here so we have visitors staying on a cruise ship the little squares the little triangles people staying on the island and then the total number here the little circles so because we have three separate categories here what this is telling us is this is not only showing change over time it is comparing three different things and then when we look at it in a little bit more detail we can see that the total is the number of cruise ship visitors and the number of people standing on the island that is these two put together so really when we start thinking about purpose it's by understanding all of this information that we start to think about purpose why did this person make this graph don't think of it as an I test think of it as a real graph why would somebody make this and that brings us on to step three understand the data from a high level right so we're not looking at individual data points we're going to zooming out a 30,000 ft View and we're looking at the overall trend for this data there's three different ways that we teach our students how to understand this data first of all imagine that you are reading a newspaper headline so often you will read newspapers and a lot of the stories will be uh about a release of data so recent data shows this or a survey shows this and it won't actually show the graph because people are too lazy to read and understand graphs what it will do is the newspaper reporter will look at the data and they'll come up with two or three or four of the most important things and they'll normally put those in the title so if you were looking at this data what would the title be of the newspaper report so it would probably say something about the total number of visitors continuing to rise steadily and it would probably say something about you know that big rise is not necessarily coming from people actually staying on the island that's because there has been a big big increase in the number of people visiting by cruise ships so if you were writing a newspaper report about this the headline would probably be something like number of tourists increases dramatically mostly due to people visiting on cruise ships or something like that that's the first way to think about it so the second way if you don't like that way you can think of this alternative way if you could only say two to four things about this data so two three or four things so I literally put a gun to your head and say you must give me two to four things you could only say that what would they be you would probably say well the total number of people is increasing the number of people staying on the island increased a little bit but it's kind of remained pretty steady and then if we look at cruise ships the third thing we would say is is you know it did remain pretty steady um between 2010 and 2013 but then we see a big big rise and it's actually overtaken people staying on the island so a big thing here is if we look at this part of the data is you know people staying on the island that used to be number one but now it's number two most people now stay on cruise ships and that has been a change since we started in 2010 so you can see by using these techniques what we're doing is we're not getting lost in the data we're looking at it from a high level we're looking down and seeing what's going on from that Vantage Point another way that you could do this is this is a third way you don't have to use all three some people use just one some people use two or three if you were to write a report for your boss so why are they giving you stuff like this well I is not only testing your ability to go to university and inter interpret data like this at University it is testing your ability to interpret data and report it to your boss your supervisor whoever it is when you move to that new country a lot of jobs are looking at data or information in some way it doesn't have to be line graphs just looking at information and then summarizing that for your boss so I am a lot of people's boss and if I asked my employees to give Give me the main points of this graph and they gave me 20 different points I would probably fire that person or they would be you know doing a little bit of training because I don't pay people to tell me everything that is in a graph I pay people to summarize the most important points so if your boss said to you have a look at this data and just tell me what are the most important things about this what would you say well you would probably say the exact same things the total number of people is going up and this is due to the fact that there has been a big increase in the number of people visiting on cruise ships and it used to be that not many people visited on cruise ships and now it has actually overtaken the number of people that are visiting and staying on land so what have we just done there we have got our overview the overview is the most important paragraph in the entire report you cannot get a bnet eight or 9 if you don't write a good overview what I've done there is I've forced you to pick out the most important overall points that you're going to put into your overview so by analyzing the data in that way you started to think about the most important things in the most important paragraph the overview we'll look at that in a little bit more detail but when we come to writing our overview we'll see that it is very very easy because we have analyzed the data in that way and you don't become good at overviews by writing lots of overviews you become good at overviews by following these steps you cannot write a good overview if you don't understand the question prompt if you don't understand the data if you don't look at it from a 30,000 ft view the next thing we're going to do is we're going to break each part of the data into chunks so how do you eat a steak do you pick up a steak and try and shove it into your mou no you will choke you'll never be able to eat it you cut it into pieces you cut it into chunks that's exactly what we're going to do with this data to make it easier to understand and easier to organize so what we're going to do is there's three lines here let's take the first line which is the total number so what we're going to do is we're going to use two rulers to show you how to do this chunking so we're only going to focus on total number little C here so we look at this entire line and we think how could we break this into chunks well if we start here in 2010 we'll see that it increases and then it stops increasing here in 2014 so here is our first chunk of data total number of visitors between 2010 and 2014 increases then if we look here 2014 to 2016 or you could you could do 2015 to 2016 doesn't really matter this is not an exact science or anything like that but between 2014 and 2016 stays relatively stable and then between 2016 and 2017 there is a big big increase actually the biggest increase so by breaking it down into three chunks it makes it much more manageable more digestable that's why I gave you the steak cutting analogy then if we look at visitors staying on the island we'll see that between 2010 and 2011 stays pretty much the same then between 2011 and 2013 there is an increase and then between 2013 and 2017 it stays pretty steady there is a little dip in 2016 but again don't over complicate this every time I show this to students especially people who who are quite mathematically inclined they will spend way too much time getting lost in the data we're trying to chunk things to make it easier to eat not to make it more complicated then if we look at visitors staying on a cruise between 2010 and 2013 kind it fluctuates a little bit but stays relatively low then between 2013 and 2017 we see a nice steady increase so now let's zoom out a little bit again I know I'm going very very slowly I realize that let's zoom out and let's have a think about what we understand now and compare that with most students so what we understand is we understand the question we understand everything about the graph all of the information we understand the key trends the overall things the overview that we're going to put together and we understand the data we've chunked it we've made it easy to understand now compare that with what most students do most students will look at this and go oh I don't know anything about the Caribbean I hate this oh I don't understand uh what's going on and then they start to panic and don't know what's going on and then their writing will be a reflection of their thinking if you follow these steps your writing will be very well organized clear and easy to understand what is the main difference between band 78 and n and students that get a band four five or six 7 8 and N isn't better in terms of it has amazing language and they've spotted something in the data that no one has ever seen before no it is just really clear well organized easy to understand how do you get there you get there by following those steps the next step is to look for any important or relevant comparisons because if we have a look at the question prompt and make comparisons where relevant where relevant means if there are comparisons talk about them if there aren't any relevant comparisons then you don't have to talk about them so let's have a look and see and remember purpose why are they showing you this data it is to compare visitors staying on cruise ships with visitors staying on the island so comparisons are probably going to be between those two so the key comparison here is at the beginning most people stayed on land there weren't that many people visiting comparatively there weren't that many people visiting on cruise ships but by the end there were more people visiting via a cruise ship than staying on land those are our key comparisons told you it's not that complicated so now we have all this information now it's time to start writing so if we have a look at our pyramid here we need to write our first paragraph which is our introduction which is just taking the question and paraphrasing it let's do that so you're going to take this first sentence and you're just going to write it using different words that mean the same thing as this so your new sentence should use different words but it should mean exactly the same thing let's show you how to do that so we're going to change the graph we can't change the you know you have to keep things like articles and prepositions you have to keep the those in sometimes it's not about changing every single word but we've changed the graph to the line graph we've used different words to say the same thing it is not paraphrasing is not about changing the and then changing graph and then changing below and then changing shows that's not how you paraphrase shows we're going to change that to presents we don't have to write below because there will be nothing below shows presents means exactly the same thing we're using synonyms we're going to change the number of tourists to the number of visitors and you'll notice what I'm doing again I'm not looking at individual words I'm chunking this sentence so the graph is one chunk I've changed that to the line graph shows that's one chunk I've changed that to presents the number of tourists that's a third chunk I've changed that to the number of visitors and I'm doing that for two reasons number one one it is much easier and number two one of the worst pieces of advice that any teacher can give you is you must change every word and you must change every word in order that is impossible and if I can't do that you won't be able to do that so you know teachers shouldn't be teaching you methods that are impossible visitors to uh specific specific particular synonyms Caribbean we cannot change Caribbean Caribbean is the Caribbean we'll change Island to destination and we'll change between 2010 and 2017 to from 2010 to 2017 so what we need to do now is we need to look at that sentence and compare it with our sentence does it mean the same thing yes it does are there any ground mistakes are there any vocabulary errors in there no there's not we can move on the next step is to write our overview and we've already thought about our overview so it should be quite easy to write we always start our overview with overall don't learn 17 different ways to do that just overall comma begin your overview so if we have a look here at our pyramid we need to pick up the two to four most important things we're not going to include any detail and we can use one of those meth methods that we talked about before so if this was a newspaper headline if we were writing to our boss if we could only talk about two three or four things what would we write about we're definitely going to say the number overall increased that's kind of the most obvious standard thing so we're going to include that so let's put that in so overall the total number of visitors increased throughout the given period so from 2010 to 2017 the period that we have been given it increased doesn't need to be any more complicated than that then what we said was most people stayed on the island at the beginning but people visiting via cruise ship that really increased and overtook and became number one by the end of the period so we need to put that into our overview so despite the majority staying on land initially as we can see here initially means at the beginning of the period this was Sur P so it overtook by those arriving on cruise liners in the final 2 years if we have a look again at our little checklist did we say the two to four most important things yes number one total number increased number two most people stayed on the island in the beginning number two number three by the end of the period most people visited via cruise ships those are the three most important things no detail we didn't include any detail whatsoever we're going to put that into our details paragraphs and that's us done now we can move on to the next step so the next step is to decide how you're going to organize your details paragraphs we're not just going to go in and write everything that we know about the data and put it into two paragraphs remember we're being judged on our organization of this information so what we need to do is look at the data and think what is The Logical way to write about this and that brings us back to purpose and the key things about this so what are the key things the most important is number of overall people increased throughout the period and then compare the two different categories so The Logical the obvious way to organize the details paragraphs remember we always have two details paragraphs is in the first details paragraph we're going to write about the number of people visiting over all and then in the second details paragraph We are going to compare these two so let's write our first details paragraph about the number overall so in the real test what I would be doing is just focusing on this line and then I would be chunking that information so I'd be saying okay between 2010 and 2015 it's steadily increased you want to write about that then kind of plateaued and then we seen our biggest increase between 2016 and 2017 going to take that chunking I'm just going to put it on paper what chunking also does is it encourages you to write only about the most important data so we're not going to write about in 2010 it was this and then in 2011 it was this and then 2012 it was this and then 2013 it was this and 2014 it was this it's not asking you to write about everything summarize the information select and Report the main features if we just look at the line the main features are in 2010 it was this and that increased to here then it plateaued and then we had a big increase so we're going to focus in on that data so let's start off at the start total number the island in 2010 was it's pretty clear this is buying on one 1 million now we need to describe what happened between 2010 and 2015 this figure annual to reach 2.75 in 2015 we don't know that it's exactly 2.75 cuz it's kind of in the middle here but we can get around that we can become accurate by just saying approximately around so we've just described Des our first chunk now let's describe our second chunk it plateaued at this level in 2016 before experiencing its largest increase so of all this data this was the biggest one year increase so we should mention that between 2016 and 2017 soaring dramatically to its peak so Peak tells the examiner that we're aware that this is the biggest number of 3 and2 million so you can see the chunking just makes it very very easy now we need to write about both people staying on cruise ships and staying on land and we need to compare those so let's start at the start most people stayed on land at the beginning of the period let's talk about that in 2010 most resided on the island around 3/4 of a million you can write 3/4 as words if you want because I'm running out of uh room here on the page I'm just putting 3/4s but you know as long as the examiner can read it and understand it and it's clear then don't worry about the difference between words and numbers so with around 3/4 of a million remaining on land so I don't think it's that significant that you know between 2010 and 2011 I kind of plateaued and then before then it kind of increased I think what we can just say is for this data it peaked so the maximum number peaked in 2013 I think that's more significant so this peaked in 2013 1.5 million and hovered around that level for the remainer of the period so it peaked in 2013 and then it stayed in and R there like hovered in and R there until the end and some of you might say well why didn't you say between 2013 and 2015 it stayed the same and then it dipped done in 2016 and then it increased in 2017 we don't need to go into that much detail because that chunk between 2013 and 2017 the most significant thing about that is that it remained pretty much the same a slight dip is not that important remember we're only putting in the key information now let's talk about cruises the number opting to visit on cruises fluctuated between quarter and half a million so you have around a quarter of a million here and it pops up to half quarter half fluctuates in and around out between 2010 and 2013 I'm putting a plus in there forgive me just cuz I'm running out of room normally you would put and don't put Plus in the real exam and then after 2013 we can see that it starts to increase and then overtakes number of people staying on land here so we need to describe that in 2014 there was a sharp escalation and cruise visitors a trend which continued year on year reaching 1.5 I'm going to put mil here in the real test you would write the full million in 2016 and culminating at 2 million in 2017 the highest of any category I'm putting any category here I'm talking about the two Cate visitors on cruise ships staying on the island we're not including total here because that's kind of its separate category and total is part of those two so you know some people in the comments are going crazy now relax in any year just had enough space to finish that off so by the time you write your last word and put a full stop there should be around you know between 15 to 18 minute Mark something like that so you'll have a few minutes at the end or maybe just one minute at the end to read it and check it make sure you didn't make any mistakes and then move on what I would also recommend you do in the real test is just skip a line between each paragraph just makes it easier for the examiner to understand where one paragraph ends and the next begins and removes any chance that they would Mark you down for that I haven't done that especially between my two details paragraphs that is on purpose because this isn't a real test this is a YouTube video and I was running out of room so now it's your turn what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you this sample question and I'm going to walk you through step by step exactly what you should do now if you want you can pause the video at any time don't worry about this this is totally normal when you're learning a new technique learning a new strategy take as much time as you want or if you want to go quickly just go through it straight away but I would recommend after each step pause and then we will go on to the next step you can just play press play again okay so let's have a look at the question step number one read the question prompt do you understand all of the words step number two read the information in the graph read the title do you understand what that means read the Y AIS and the xaxis what does it say there and look at the different categories understand the difference between these categories step number three look and understand the data at a very high level the goal here is not to look at individual data points is to look at it from that 30,000 ft View and think about these three questions what would the newspaper headline be if this graph or chart was in a newspaper what would the headline be question number two if you could only say a few things about this you could only say two or three things about this data what would it be and number three if you were working for someone if you had to summarize this information for your boss what two or three things would you send to your boss one key thing to remember at this stage is don't get lost in the data and the easiest way not to get lost in the data is to force yourself not to spend too much time looking at it in general students that spend too much time looking at data perform worse than students that just look at the data for you know 1 to three minutes quite quickly and pick out the most important things step number four break the data into chunks so if this is a line graph for example look at each line and try and break it down into chunks step number five are there any relevant comparisons think about why they made this graph did they make it to compare things if they did what are the most striking the most relevant the most significant comparisons okay now you should have fully understood all of the data do not spend any more time looking at it and thinking about about it step number six now it's time to start writing get your pen piece of paper and write out your introduction what you're going to do is you're going to take the question prompt and you're going to paraphrase it paraphrasing does not mean change every single word in order it means change enough of the words so that it means exactly the same thing so write it in your own words but make sure that it means the same step number seven now it's time to write your overview skip a line start a new paragraph and write overall comma and then put in two three or four of the most significant overall features of the data or the map or the plan if you are uncertain or you don't know what to write go back to the questions those three questions and the comparisons what are the most important things put that down don't overthink it what a lot of students think is that because this is an test that they must write something high level or complex most of the time the overview contains really obvious simple straightforward things don't second guess yourself and think that it's too simple it normally isn't step number eight decide how you're going to organize your details paragraphs what is the most logical way of organizing your details paragraphs what are you going to put in paragraph number one details paragraph number one and details paragraph number two if you don't know what these are put yourself in the shoes of the reader what will make it easy for the reader to understand step number nine now it's time to write our two details paragraphs skip a line after your overview and write your first details paragraph if you don't know what to write go back to that chunking of the information you're not writing about everything you're just separate ating it out into chunks and writing about it in that way now that you've finished your details paragraphs go and check that all of the information is accurate that the data is accurate if you're unsure remember to add in approximations last step check your grammar check your vocabulary check your spelling there's any mistakes in there that you can fix fix them and now you're done okay so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a checklist I'm not going to give you a sample answer sample answers are good they do have value but on test day you will not have a sample answer so students that get used to sample answers and just copying sample answers don't do as well as students that use both sample answers and checklists and in general students that get a band eight or get a band nine for task one they use more checklists why because on test day you can use a checkl to make sure that you've done everything correctly you cannot use a sample answer it's just not how it's going to work on test day we want to recreate test day during our preparation time as much as possible so what I want you to do is take your task one report that you just produced and I want you to apply this checklist and if you get something correct give it a tick that's good but if you didn't get something that's even better because why do we use checklists we use checklists not to give ourselves a pat on the back and say you know good boy good girl we're not children here what we're trying to do is find out the stuff that we didn't do well to uncover our mistakes because those are golden that's where the real Improvement comes so if you get something wrong good then next time you can get that correct and then before your test what you should be doing is doing this under 20 minutes and being able to apply this checklist yourself and be able to take everything and then you know you're ready so let's start off with our introduction look at your introduction look at the question prompt does it mean the same thing if it does good if it doesn't then you need to work on your paraphrasing normally students that need to work on their paraphrasing it's normally because they have been told by other teachers that they must change every word or they must use complex vocabulary or complex grammar the best way to improve your paraphrasing is number one through practice number two just simplify everything and don't be afraid to repeat some of the words paraphrasing again I know I'm repeating myself here is not avoid changing every single word look at your introduction again are there any spelling or grammar or vocabulary mistakes in there if there are fix them don't worry about it and the solution to having lots of grammar and vocab errors is number one practice number two improve your grammar improve your vocabulary if you need help with that we do have our VIP course or you can get in touch with us and you know we can help you in different ways but the way that you can help yourself for free today instantly is simplify everything it is not essential to get a bound eight or nine for every single word to be a band nine high level word you know words like the a to these are the most common words in the English language the greatest writers of all time use them all the time next have a look at your overview is it clear where your overview begins in other words is your paragraphing clear did you skip a line between your introduction and your overview it should be super clear to The Examiner next on the checklist for your overview did you begin your overview with overall comma next did you include any data so it's okay if you you maybe included a a date that's not really data but you shouldn't really include any data points from the graph next have I included two to four key features if you've only got one that's not enough but if you've included like five or six different things that's way too many sometimes it's two sometimes it's three sometimes it's four looking again at your overview are the features that you included the most significant features and finally have you made comparisons were relevant just a little tip on this it is often a good idea to leave this and do it with what we call Fresh eyes so if you are practicing it is a good idea just to leave this for a few hours or maybe return to it the next day or a few days later because often you will see things and identify things that you didn't see the first time so students often say you know how will I know if these are key features look at it with fresh eyes now let's move on to the checklist for details paragraphs number one is your paragraphing clear is it clear where the overview ends and the first details paragraph begins and is it clear where the first detail paragraph ends and the second one begins next is the way that you have organized information in your 2 details paragraph is that logical again a good way of doing this is to go back and read read it with fresh eyes read it a few hours later read it the next day does it make sense to you is it easy for you to understand if it is not easy for you to understand it will definitely not be easy to understand for another human being next is did you only include the most significant the most relevant information in your details paragraphs if you have put everything in there and it's way too long then that is a clear indication that you put in too much is my data accurate go and check every single data point that you put in your details paragraph double check it with the data is it accurate and have you made comparisons where relevant okay let's zoom out now and look at your whole task one report number one is your paragraphing clear I know that I have repeated myself I've mentioned this a few times but it's really the easiest marks that you can get and it's the easiest way to lower your score as well number two did I follow the structure so the structure that we gave you in this video is not a suggestion it is a prescription you should follow it exactly what a lot of students do is they look at a structure and they generally follow it they don't follow it exactly if you went to the doctor and the doctor told you to do something you would do it exactly you wouldn't generally follow their advice and also this is based on what thousands of students have done to get the score that they need also what a lot of students do is they follow five six different teachers especially on YouTube they all have a different strategy I'm not saying you have to follow me but I do have more band seven eight and N success stories than any other IELTS teacher in the world so it's probably a good idea to follow someone who has actually helped students do what you're trying to do next count the total number of words is it between 15 and 200 if it's under 150 that is a major problem that you need to address you're probably not writing enough in your details paragraphs if you are going way over 200 like if you're 2011 206 like that doesn't really matter but if you're at like between 210 and you know over uh that means that you're writing too much in your details paragraphs last but not least is my spelling is my grammar is my vocabulary accurate remember that structure and organizing the information and identifying the key features and all of these things are only really half of your marks 50% of your marks will come from accurate clear appropriate grammar and vocabulary and just to remind you we're not looking for Perfection here what we're looking for is progress if you made mistakes now that is great because you now know what your weaknesses are and you can work on those weaknesses and improve if you want our help doing that or if you want us to help you with other types of task one then we do have our VIP course we also have a correction service or we have other free courses always feel free to get in touch with us Chrisi advantage.com we answer 100% of the emails that we receive always feel free to send us an email so that was the beginner guide to task one if you want a more advanced lesson click here and I'm going to show you how I would transform a band Six task one response to a band eight or nine click on here and I'll show you exactly how to do that