How do you write a conclusion for an IELTS academic part 1? Do you in fact need to write a conclusion at all? There is no one answer to that question but I am going to give you some ideas to think about. I am also going to give you an exercise based on a piece of writing sent into me by one of my subscribers.
Is a conclusion necessary?
This will depend to some extent on how you have written the report. It is quite possible that you do not need a conclusion if
- you have written a strong introduction and identified the main patterns/trends of the chart/graph in the introduction,so you don’t need to repeat yourself in the conclusion.
- you have written very clear “topic” sentences in your main paragraphs and the main points are already clear and cannot easily be summarised
- you have 2/3 charts/graphs and there is no one conclusion
Length
You don’t have to write too much. A sentence is enough. It can even be quite a short sentence. It can be a mistake to include too much detail in the conclusion as the examiner will cross it out if it is simply copied from the main body of your report.
Ideas
The danger is you put your own ideas into the conclusion as this is one of the things that you do in academic essays. This is a reporting/summarising task though, so it is a mistake to do this or to interpret the data.
Content
The usual rule is that you should not put any new detail into a conclusion, but only summarise your main content paragraphs. This means in practice that you pick out the main details of the chart/graph you have been looking at. This will be typically the main trends or patterns in the chart/graph.
How to do it
Here’s the trick. When you write the conclusion, don’t look at the graph or what you have already written. If you do that, you may write too much or write something too complex. The conclusion should be simple.
Try this. Look away. See what you remember about the graph. There should be 2 or 3 main points. These are the points you include in your conclusion.
A student sample
This is a sample task and answer sent in by one of my subscribers. I have corrected some of the English (which was good anyway). The one “mistake” was to leave out the fact that more women than men were employed in two sectors by 1995. The organisation of the report is very sensible with one paragraph for men and one for women.
Your task
Here is my corrected version of the report. It isn’t perfect, it isn’t meant to be. I have deleted the conclusion I wrote and added it as a comment to this post. Your task is to decide what you would write as a conclusion. If you like you can post it as a comment and I’ll try to comment back:
The graph describes the difference between the number of men and women employed in 6 employment sectors of Freedonia between 1975 and 1995.
Generally, the highest amount of men worker in both surveyed years recorded at about 850,000 in non-defense, whereas the lowest amount was in defense which fell from 250000 to 225,000. No major change can be seen in the number of male workers in the other sectors (manufacturing: 650,000; communication: about 250,000, wholesale and retail trade: 700,000) , although finance-banking increased by 8000 to more or less 500000.
It can be clearly seen that more women started to work in most sectors except for manufacturing and non-defense where there was no significant change In order, the increases were 250,000 to 600,000 in communication, then 150,000 to close to 475,000 in finance-banking, 575,000 to less than 800,000 in wholesale and retail trade and around 25,000 (bottom of graph) to over 100,000 defense. We should also note that there were more women than men were employed in communications and trade in 1995.
Here is my version. Yours may be better.
In conclusion, we can see that more women were employed in Freedonia in 1995, but this depended on the sector.
Mr Dominic.
once one of my ielts teacher said that in academic task 1, we do not have to put a conclusion on it because what we do are find the general trends, find the keywords from the data given then write all of them. report the task, finish. no need conclusion bcz the task itself is not asking us to make it.
So, do you agree? and what suppose i do?
In many ways I agree with your teacher. In fact, most of my models used to be written without conclusions. However, if you look at the official practice books most of the models do have a conclusion. As do most textbook models. So I have changed my mind – slightly.
I suggest you do use a conclusion – it is safer. But you must make sure that you don’t use your own opinions – that is the danger of writing a conclusion.
In any event, you shouldn’t worry about making your conclusion a work of art and spend much time on it. All it needs to be is a short, simple sentence.
I would add this: if you do not use a conclusion, you need to write your introduction much more carefully and put the information from the conclusion giving the general patterns in the introduction. You do still need to include this information, it’s just a question of where you put it.
Part of my reason for changing my model is that I believe it is easier to do this in the conclusion than in the introduction – particularly in exam circumstances.
My conclusion: In my opinion, my women entered the work force in Freedonia in 1995. Probably more women received education over the years from 1975. (Do you think my last sentence is unnecessary? Like you said we shouldn’t use our own opinions or deduce the reasons behind the trend?)
Definitely do not include the bit about women getting more education. There is nothing shown in the graph about this. Also the “in my opinion” is wrong too. There is no opinion involved in this exercise: it is just to describe what you see.
It is for just this reason that I used to teach people not to write a conclusion – you want (and it is quite natural) to make intelligent deductions about the chart/graph but it is not part of the task.
This is a useful website for helping to improve your IELTS. I also saw that at goodenglishhelp.com you can get an IELTS tutor to help improve your IELTS writing. It was very useful for me as well.
Thanks for good information that comes out to
read.
Hi Mr. Cole,
I will be taking my IELTS exam and I am wondering if you could help me with my writing task. May I post some writing task samples that I have made and would you please check it for me.
Thank You,
Dear Cole,
I just found your blog and I think it is really helpful.
In conclusion, the number of employees increased in most sectors in both men and women.
My English conversation is just not so super butI consider I realize everything. Thank u so much for that fantastic website publish. I truly appreciate reading it. I feel you are a absolute author. At this second added ur site to my favorites and can arrive once again to yor web site. Hold up that wonder function. Expect to see far more soon.
———————
MADRID
a very interesting and helpfull site thanks all
Dear Mr. Cole
Your website is by far the most helpful & most professional in preparing for IELTS. Thanks a million & Deepest appreciation.
My summary is:
To sum up, it is evident that more women became employed in Freedonia in 1995 who even outnumbered men in some sectors.
MM,i saw this blog too late,my exam tomorrow:)
Dear Mr. Cole,
Please accept my greatest thanks for your website. as an IELTS speaking teacher I have been using your videos and website for my students in China. The other day one of my students ask me who to believe her Chinese writing teacher or your website. I told her if she wanted to achieve her greatest score to do as you recommended.
I appreciate all the different modules that you have expanded on with your website for it is easy for non-native learners to navigate through. The other aspect you answer most of their questions and my class has become easier at times.
From all my students and myself a great THANK YOU
Thanks for your comment. My answer on who to believe is that normally there is no one right answer and different teachers have different styles and so do learners. What I tell my own class is to try different things out and see what works for them.
If the particular question relates to the need for a conclusion in task 1, I feel comfortable saying that you do not have to one all the time. Sometimes you will, sometimes you won’t – it depends on the graphs/charts you are given and how you write. If you do not have a conclusion at then end, you may have one sentence in your introduction that summarises the key features of the charts/graphs or you may simply use the introductions of your paragraphs (those topic sentences) as mini-conclusions to show what the key features are.
Thank you very Much Mr. Cole. I am trying to achieve 8 in writing and unfortunately still struggling with it, mostly due to the lack of sentence structural variety. For this graph, i have written couple of sentences. Will you please kind enough to check them for me. Regards.
The graph illustrates the difference in the number of male and female workers in different employment sectors in two individual years, 1975 and 1995.
It is immediately clear from the graph that, in both mentioned years, the highest amount of men workers served in non-defence sector at approximately 880,000, where as defence was the least popular sector falling by almost 25000 to 200000. If we compare the other sectors, we can see that, in those sectors there was very little or no difference in the amount of male employees.
By contrast, in 1995, communications and whole sale and retail jobs were served by more females than males. In communication sector this number was double at just under 600000, while it was half in manufacturing at 250000. In comparison to 1975, in 1995 four times as many women worked in finance and banking related jobs, figured at about 425000.
One can draw a conclusion that, more women joined the work force by 1995.
Sorry I simply don’t have the time to comment extensively on this. It is clear to me though that you have the language to get your band score 8. Be a little careful with your articles. the communication sector. draw the conclusion.