IELTS Writing Task 1 is academic writing intended for a university lecturer so you should use appropriate, academic words. You have to describe a graph in the form of report or essay. You will meet several different graphs in a IELTS Writing Task 1: Single line graph, Double line graph, Bar Graph, Pie Chart, Table, or Process.
Some rules in describing graph, chart, process or table are:
- Your report must be of at least 150 words written in 20 minutes.
- Do not write your opinion or copy words from the task prompt – rephrase and use synonyms instead.
- Never use bullets or points, write your report in the form of essay or letter.
One of the most important part in your report is its structure. The IELTS examiners will look
for Introduction – Body – Conclusion structure from your report. In
general, report will be easily read that way. Here are some key points
in your essay's structure.
The Introduction part should
describe the purpose of your report and say what overall trends you
see. You need to remember that you are describing a graph to someone who
doesn’t see it. Write what the graph is about, including its dates and
location.
As for The Body, you should describe
the most important trends, while all information is summarized to avoid
unnecessary details. For example, if there is a graph that has 2 peaks,
you should mention them; tell when those peaks appeared and what the
peak values are. You should link the paragraphs by sentences that
logically connect them to one another.
The Conclusion should sum up the general issues and objects shown on the graph and compare them if possible.
Here is a good example of essay writing that get score band 7, taken from IELTS Blog.
