IELTS Academic Writing Task 1

IELTS is the most notable and widespread test used to examine a student's proficiency in the English language. It evaluates a person's fluency, pronunciation, clarity, intonation, and many more. The examiners do this verification by designing the whole questionnaire precisely, which entails all the valuable tasks of Reading, Listening, Writing, and Speaking. Moreover, the scorecard of this test is highly appreciated by all the educational institutions of the world. Contradictorily, like all other tests, this test is also split into two sub-divisions: IELTS Academic and IELTS General. Although there are many similarities between both the test, yet some modules or tasks like task 1 of the Writing section and reading module are very different from each other. For a detailed differentiation, one can visit here. In this particular blog, we shall discuss the task 1 of IELTS Academic writing in detail.

Task 1 of IELTS Academic writing is very interesting and practical to attempt. Initially, if we dig deeper toward the format or introduction of this task, it might increase your readiness. This specific task requires a candidate to write a summary or description of any pictorial or diagrammatical representation of a thing. These writings are done in response to a particular graph, chart, etc. One is allowed to complete the whole of the response in about 150 words. Notably, there are many aspirants who think that exceeding the word limit would give them extra bands. On the contrary, the outcome turns out negatively. The examiner counts your words while checking and any write-up that is more than the word limit deducts his or her marks. Furthermore, if we talk about the time allotment, each candidate a complete 1-hour for the writing module. It depends on the fact that how you divide your time accordingly. It is considered that one should not spend more than 20 minutes on task 1 because task 2 is lengthier and quite hard. Particularly, many websites provide you diverse IELTS Practice Material to get familiar with the particular question. All these assignments are well prepared and contain specially designed charts and graphs. 

In addition to it, if we throw some light on the scoring pattern or skills assessed by this task, it tests your ability to select & report the main features of a chart, to describe & compare data provided, identify the significance & trends in factual information, or describe a process, flowchart, to talk about the contents of past, present, and future. This particular task contributes one-third ( 33% ) in your total and overall score. Specifically, if we talk about the skills assessed, this particular question requires four basic abilities from a person. They are: 
  • Task Achievement ( 25% ): How well you accomplished the given question.
  • Coherence & Cohesion ( 25% ): How well you stick to the topic and the examiner concedes your message.
  • Lexical Resource ( 25% ): Ability to use an extensive series of vocabulary precisely.
  • Grammatical Range & Accuracy ( 25% ): Ability to implement the grammar rules & tenses in your speech accurately.
It is very important to give the examiner what he or she wants in order to score high. 

Specifically, it is very necessary to comprehend all the techniques that one should follow while performing this task during the test. These are very essential to get a good outcome of all your IELTS Preparation. The first and foremost thing is to paraphrase the question statement precisely. The best place to put the paraphrased statement is the first line of your description. The introduction paragraph is very quick to write & quite formulaic (standard) in the content. Thus, this paragraph should be very impressive to build the examiner's interest. Furthermore, the insertion of complex sentences is also very necessary. This specific step proves very beneficial to uplift your writing to another level. On the other hand, most of the students conjecture that complex means complicated and tough. However, complex sentences and structures don't mean intricate texts or tricky words. The main motive behind it is to put simple ideas or thoughts simply together, in a professional way. Conversely, always try to paragraph your ideas and thoughts accurately. After the introduction paragraph, a candidate may make a passage where he or she can include three or four main features of the diagram or chart. Notably, it is not important to add each and every minute detail in your summary as it will tend you to write more. Moreover, in a separate paragraph, support all the main ideas and features of the picture with the given data and measurements. While writing or elucidating the graph or a chart, one has to write a complete system overview of the diagrams. 

Specifically, there are a total of seven types of charts or diagrams, if divided by categories. These are the Bar chart, Line graph, Pie diagram, Table, Process chart, Flowchart, and maps. Moreover, one can even get two same or different diagrams also at a time and one has to include the information of both the charts in the same summary like a bar and a pie chart. For this type of question, the efficient method to solve it is by making separate paragraphs of both the charts to avoid any confusion. Furthermore, always check and proofread your write-up to attend all the grammar & spelling mistakes. This is a very important step, especially for task 1, where revising the summary will also provide them an assurance that you've entered the right measurements, unit, or data. Also, make sure to use a good number of linkers and transition words, which act as a bridge between two sentences. This also gives a smooth transition to the sentences by removing the stiffness or abruptness. Moreover, prepare a good structure for your description and plan for at least 2-3 minutes before writing the summary efficiently. Additionally, practice all types of IELTS Practice Test | Mock Test of Task 1 separately to learn the features and components of each precisely. Practicing each type will allow you to meet and face any type of question in the test. 

In this way, this part of the writing section is very unique and interesting from all the questions and other proficiency tests. It extracts all the practical and visual capabilities of a student and places it in front of the universities and colleges where you want to apply. In addition to it, this task also develops one to think about the graphical and pictorial structures as well by opening more wide opportunities for a person. On the contrary, this task also appeals to one to write & demonstrate what he or she can clearly communicate in English. Consequently, one must practice this task also with great devotion. One must not think this task to be a simple and mild question. Instead, he or she must solve various IELTS Writing Assignments and Sample Papers that give you a wide knowledge and Model Answers of each task 1 type. For this, he or she has to choose from where they get study material. If they go online for IELTS Practice, there are so many websites which provide online IELTS Practice Material from which FourModules is one.