IELTS Preparation Series 2, Episode 25: Academic Writing

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Hello. I'm Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

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Today on Study English we're going to give you some tips and strategies for answering

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Task 1 IELTS Academic questions.

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We'll look at what's involved in planning an essay, and then we'll try planning answers

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to some practice questions.

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Task 1 of the IELTS Academic module asks you to describe data.

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The key word is describe.

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That means you don't need to comment on or interpret the data. Your task is only to describe

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the data.

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When you're writing a description, it's important to know what the context is and who your audience

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is.

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In Task 1, the audience is usually a university lecturer or a teacher. So we know that it

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should be formal.

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Let's review what we know about task 1.

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The key word is describe, and the context is formal.

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There's a range of things you might be asked to describe. Let's have a look at some examples.

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You might be asked to describe data.

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That could be in a bar graph or column graph,

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a pie chart or a line graph.

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Or it could be presented in the form of a table.

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You might have to describe some kind of process or cycle.

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You could also be shown a diagram of a machine or object and asked to describe the parts

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or the function.

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Now, let's take a look at a practice question. Here's an example Task 1 question:

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This table gives participation rates in higher education, in New South Wales, for males and

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females according to home location, in urban, rural or remote areas, for the year 2004.

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We also have a graph.

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The graph shows the same information as the table.

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We can see that we have information about the number of men and women who go onto higher

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education, or university, in three different areas.

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Before we can describe this data, it's a good idea to think about how to organise our description.

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There are two options. It's up to you which one you choose, but let's look at each of

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them.

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With Option 1, you could divide your essay up into an introductory paragraph and two

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body paragraphs.

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One paragraph would describe male participation rates in each of the three locations, while

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the other paragraph would describe female participation rates.

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So our essay would be structured like this.

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The first paragraph is the introductory paragraph. It should only have 2 sentences.

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Sentence 1 should paraphrase the question, and sentence two should outline your approach

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to the data.

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The second two paragraphs are body paragraphs 1 and 2.

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In the first, you might address female participation rates for each location - urban, rural and

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remote.

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In body paragraph 2, you'd talk about male participation rates for each location - urban,

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rural and remote.

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