This is a complete IELTS writing task 1 lesson. You will find here a quiz on the exam, a sample task 1 question, an interactive quiz guiding you through a possible approach to this part of the paper and then an online timed exercise and finally a sample answer.
Think and plan
The concept here is to get you doing and most importantly thinking. For me, this is the most academic part of the whole IELTS exam: indeed, perhaps the one truly academic part of the exam. If I have one major tip here it is to think (and plan) as much as you can before you start writing. If you do that, the writing part tends to be easier – with practice!
The aim of the lesson
This lesson has a very particular focus. It is to get you organising and selecting the right information. This is a personal comment, but I really do believe that the major difficulty in this part of the paper is one of organisation: in contrast to the essay, all the information is given to you and most of the language is quite predictable. What is left is the task of putting that information and language together: the task of organisation.
Now the interesting bit
Below you’ll find an IELTS task 1 writing task. There is a relatively easy set of questions to help you approach the question. It is in effect a mini lesson. Please note that the information in the chart is made up! You’ll find my solution posted as a comment. I suggest you do the exercise and then check my answer out.
A suggested approach
In short my suggested approach is:
- Find the main ideas: look for the obvious points. Often these are missed because they look too simple. An example of a main idea is that the trend is upwards. Each main idea is the topic of a separate paragraph (just like an essay really).
- Find the key supporting details: looking for the extremes is a good place to start- these details are the support for your main ideas
Model answer
You will find my model answer attached as a comment. Note that you may have to expand the quiz (bottom right hand corner) to view it properly.
A sample answer
This chart shows the relative popularity of broadband and dial up internet access in 10 countries from Europe, Asia and North America. It is evident that broadband tends to be more common than dial up. In Japan approximately four times as many houses have broadband (40%) rather than dial up (10%). A similar pattern can be seen in the USA, Malaysia and Italy. In contrast, in France and Germany broadband is only 3-4% more popular, while in Australia they are equally used at 20 %. The major exceptions are the United Kingdom and India where more houses have dial up access.
The other major point to note is that in the USA over 65% of households have internet access, while in India only 20% do. In Australia, most of the European countries and Japan just over half of the people have internet at home. Only about 40% of Italians, however, can use the internet at home. The country with the lowest figure is India at less than 20%. (168 words)
Notes
There are clearly more ways of organising this report. Another possibility would be to write one main paragraph about broadband and another about dial up.
The main point to note about this task is the organisation of the answer, Each paragraph focusses on one main point. This point is then developed and explained with supporting details.
Mr Dominic,
Today I happen to find out about this excellent site of yours and I want to thank you for all the lessons and tips you wrote for practising for the ielts exam. I am very bad at grammar, and am not confident with my writing skills. I will be taking the exam in Feb and am now educating myself.
I wrote the report for this bar chart, but I have no one to correct it for me. I would be grateful if you could correct it for me, and perhaps mark the band score as well? Thank you very much again for your wonderful classes.
My answer is attached below.
This graph shows the comparition proportion between houses using broadband and dial up to connect to the internet in nine different countries in 2009. It is obvious that the USA has the most percentage at 50 percent for broadband while only approximately 20 percent of people used dial up. Japan and Malaysia have the same pattern where broadband users take up significantly high rates than that of the dial up users. However, in France, Germany and Italy, only a slight difference is noted in the users of broadband and dial up respectively. In contrast, the UK and India have people using dial up more than that of broadband for surfing the internet. There is an exception in the whole chart where Australians share the same proportion at about 22 percent for both dial up and broadband. Overall, this chart shows the figures for each way for surfing the net varies on geographical bases.