August 14, 2024
In this article, we’ll take a look at a good sample answer to an Academic Writing Task 1 question and provide a step-by-step guide to writing such answers. In order to achieve a high band score in Academic Writing Task 1, candidates should pay attention to several factors.
First of all,
you should know how to organize your ideas into paragraphs. That is, you need to have an introduction, an overview, and one or two body paragraphs.
- The introduction: In this paragraph the candidate should (1) change the wording of the question statement, and (2) identify the what, who, where, and when of the information provided. Let’s consider the following question as an example:
The question statement: The charts below show the changes in ownership of electrical appliances and amount of time spent doing housework in households in one country between 1920 and 2019.
- The introduction: The first graph provides information on (what?) the percentage of households owning washing machines, refrigerators, and vacuum cleaners (when?) between the years 1920 and 2019, whereas the second graph gives data on (what?) the amount of time spent doing housework (when?) in the same period.
The overview: This paragraph should contain information about the most noticeable changes, differences, or patterns. Identifying the highest and lowest points is usually a good starting point. However, candidates shouldn’t get into specifics in this paragraph; that is, detailed analyses and comparisons of the information should take place in the body paragraphs. There are normally 2 or 3 key features that should be reported here. Let’s take a look at a sample overview for our question.
- Sample Overview: Overall, it is immediately apparent that (key feature 1) there was an inverse relationship between the percentage of households that owned electrical appliances and the amount of time they spent doing housework. (key feature 2) The lowest percentage of households with appliances can be seen in 1920; also, the highest amount of time was spent on housework in the same year also.
The body paragraph(s): Depending on the question, you may decide to write 1 or 2 body paragraphs. These paragraphs normally contain more details in comparison with the overview and are intended to give the candidate the opportunity to compare and contrast what they see. Therefore, it’s not a good idea to write down individual sentences about each piece of information separately. Instead, you should identify the relationship between different pieces of information and make relevant comparisons.
Let’s go over the sample body paragraphs written for this question.
- Body paragraph 1: With regard to the ownership of refrigerators, it can be seen that almost no households had one in 1920; however, there was a significant increase in the percentage of households owning a refrigerator between 1920 and 1980, when the percentage reached an all-time high of 100%. In the same way, although a higher percentage of households that owned a vacuum cleaner in 1920 (30%), this percentage kept rising and reached 100% in 2000, exactly 20 years after all households already owned a refrigerator.
- Body paragraph 2: A closer look at the graph containing information on the number of hours spent on housework reveals that the time people spent on housework plummeted from 50 hours a week in 1920 to 20 hours a week in 1960. Likewise, another fall can be seen from 1960 to 1980 (from 20 hours a week to approximately 15 hours a week). Between 1980 and 2000, the number of hours spent doing housework remained unchanged. (roughly 15 hours a week) and then fell to an all-time low of a little over 10 hours a week, which was nowhere near as high as the number of hours spent on housework in 1920.
Secondly,
since vocabulary accounts for 25% of your overall band score, you should learn the words and phrases which are commonly used in the IELTS Academic Writing Task 1. To give you an idea of what language items you should learn, we’ve decided to provide a list of the best items used in the sample answer.
- The first graph provides information on …
Meaning: gives information about
Whereas —> Used to make comparisons
Example: The line graph provides information on the number of male students, whereas the pie chart shows the percentage of students who belonged to different age groups.
- It is immediately apparent that …
Meaning: It can clearly be seen that …
- With regard to the number of hours spent on housework, …
Meaning: As concerns, in respect of
- There was a significant increase in …
Meaning: a dramatic/substantial increase
- The percentage reached an all-time high
Meaning: The highest percentage ever
- This percentage kept rising
Meaning: Continued rising without experiencing a fall/decline
- This percentage went up gradually
Meaning: went up over a long period
- A closer look at the graph reveals that . . .
Meaning: If you look at the graph more carefully, you can see that …
- Plummet (v.)
Meaning: Decrease significantly
Example: The percentage plummeted and reached an all-time low in 2020.
- Approximately (adv.)
Meaning: Roughly, about
Example: Approximately all the students took part in the chemistry course in 2015.
Finally,
a good knowledge of grammar helps you produce error-free sentences and make comparisons correctly. In addition, if you are looking to get a high band score, you must be able to use a range of complex structures. That is, if you only write down simple sentences, you probably won’t get the score you need. Let’s look at some examples taken from the sample answer.
- The lowest percentage =/= The highest percentage
- It was nowhere near as high as … —> used to show a large difference between two numbers, percentages, or amounts.
Example: The number of male students was nowhere near as high as that of female students.
Meaning: The number of female students was much higher.
- Likewise / In the same way / Similarly —> used to show similarity
Example: The number of unemployed people rose to an all-time high of 250,000 in 2019. Likewise, there was a similar increase in the number of the homeless.
- However / On the contrary / In contrast —> used to show contrast
Example 1: The percentage of unemployed people kept rising (consistently) from 2015 to 2020; however, the percentage of homeless people declined significantly over the same period.
Example 2: The percentage of unemployed people kept rising consistently from 2015 to 2020. In contrast, the percentage of homeless people declined significantly over the same period.
All in all, if you follow the format discussed in this article, improve your knowledge of grammar, and use the vocabulary items provided, you’ll have a very good chance of getting your desired band score in IELTS writing task 1.
