aubrey tell me the truth what do you do you enjoy doing writing task one like sample essays do you
rea do you love ielts writing task one oh my gosh no they're the worst i'm so excited i
apologize on behalf of ielts everywhere that any of you are doing academic and have to write task
1 essays because they're the worst and you're not going to have to write them in the future i hope
it's it's ridiculous um i mean general training task 1 is awesome i could write
fake letters all day coming up with like creative details and characters and experiences
general training task one is rad um but academic task one okay just real fast in case you are just
beginning your ielts journey um what are the possible question types of academic task one
you're going to be seeing graphs or charts maybe pie charts for one possibility and then you have
to choose the most important information and compare it and write about it the other
possibility is like a process diagram describing a process of the creation of something right
and the tricky thing is you probably haven't seen a lot of graphs like that or if you have
you're just glancing at it to kind of figure out what it is you're not having to compare and
really dive into describing this information so it's sort of unfamiliar skills that you need and
not very fun at all i know numbers are boring well i mean obviously like i love words more
than numbers so just you know that's right there may be people out there who don't mind this that
are like i know this is fun let's describe these numbers might enjoy it i mean more power to you
if that's the case um so yeah real fast before we get to this excellent excellent task one question
it'll really clear up a lot for you guys today um even though the possibilities for task 1 questions
seem disconnected right we got maps we got nature diagrams we got change over time line graphs we
got static pie charts and tables um the strategies for writing about these for what information
to include how to organize the information what sentence structures to use what vocabulary to use
all of that stuff is the same right and we teach you all about this in our writing course guys if
writing is the only thing holding you back if like listening reading speaking that's all great but
writing is the biggest headache guys check out our three keys writing only course um it's real
easy to remember all years english dot com slash writing only and there you go so let's read this
question and we'll we'll build this out for you guys okay so this question comes from one of our
three keys student it was posted in the three keys facebook group where students are able to
post questions and we answer them kyoko hello um and they wrote in writing task one if there
are for example five sets of information like five different industries or something like that
and if three of them don't contain any important references to mention i don't think they do
there's no need to mention them at all and just write about the other two question mark this is
a really good question yeah um it does okay yeah task one is horrible because it seems logical
and a a reasonable assumption that if three of these things don't seem to be important at all
then don't put them in your essay like write why write about something that's not important when we
say don't include important information we don't mean categories we mean numbers don't include
numbers that are not interesting or not important in order to get even a six for task
you need to touch base with all of the information provided right so it's like we have to mention
all five categories but then only give the most important numbers for each category so we came
up with a little example chart so hopefully this can be clearer to you guys um and we're going to
tell you what numbers you need to include um if it's a static graph or a change over time graph
exactly so we were thinking about the five biggest industries in portland and we just threw out some
random industries this is accurate don't hold us to this and we're first going to talk about change
over time graphs this is where you're seeing dates and how information changed over a period of time
so you see a few different dates and numbers for these different industries on those dates right so
it's probably a line graph right and you just have five lines exactly right it should look fairly
straightforward hopefully so for example it might show net sales and how the sales changed over time
so we're going to throw out the industries timber auto parts toys frozen food and bicycles
so for change over time you're looking at what are the biggest increases and decreases where did this
information change the most exactly so really just four things you need to include for every single
line on that graph like going back to kyoko's question if i see five lines on the graph and
three of them are just kind of straggling in the middle they don't seem important maybe i'm only
going to describe like the top line and the bottom line oh that would be such a mistake you would get
maybe a five maybe a four for task if you did that like that would be terrible guys so i need
to mention all five lines now don't think i have to give tons of numbers for each line so when we
say the key numbers are beginning and highest lowest that doesn't mean you're giving four
numbers for each line because usually a line will start at the lowest point and it will end at the
highest point so you only have to give two numbers in that case right so really it's if you're not
giving tons of numbers for each line but those are the key numbers you have to include in your essay
if you're gonna get even a six or higher for task guys the beginning numbers the n numbers the
highest and the lowest for each line yes and then if you have a huge increase of something and then
it decreases drastically these really important changes that's that's significant right if you see
something really obvious and big in the chart you definitely want to include that as well right yes
your overall trend it's going to be clear you know what are the overall changes and that has to be
included in your body paragraphs too totally that's a good point so besides those four key
numbers that will definitely be there if there is something incredibly interesting like you know the
most enormous change and you could you could easily know this just if you glance at a graph
right just glance at it what do you notice first what jumps out at you right if something jumps
out that's important put it in your essay yes exactly all right so now let's talk about the same
information but that could be presented very difficult differently in a static chart right
yeah so if this is showing for example number of units produced in 2021 we're seeing like a
snapshot one point in time and that's looking very different right we're seeing highest and
lowest numbers instead of how information changed over time yeah exactly so because the information
is presented differently the key numbers are different so in this case um the image you see
will most likely be a table we'll have the five industries on the top again timber auto parts toys
frozen food and bicycles i would love for someone to recreate these these graphs and send them to us
and then maybe you have the types of numbers on the side right so we have
number of units produced profit uh number of employees this is a classic static
table that looks so confusing when you first look at it because you're like there's so many numbers
how do i organize this what do i do in my essay so here's the key guys choose the easiest path
if we have five industries along the top and we have three categories along the side right
number of units profit number of employees organize it by those three categories because
most likely guys it'll be obvious where to draw that line where to separate them into groups of
information um like the number of units produced and profit that should probably go together in
one paragraph and employees not super connected this will be in its own paragraph so now we have
two groups of information right decide those two groups first and then we circle the most
important numbers for each group so static what are the most important numbers aubrey highest
second highest is often needs to be included and then lowest right and this is for each group of
information right just because some are maybe middle of the road we still need to hear what is
the highest and lowest for those as well exactly and so you circle highest second highest lowest
now if you glance at what you circled and you notice you're like oh my gosh
no numbers are circled for bicycles and frozen food you still need to mention those in your essay
guys don't give any numbers for them but as maybe a conclusion or maybe in the introduction um i
would put it as a conclusion actually i would say as to the other two industries of frozen food and
bicycles all of their numbers fell in the middle or were average as compared to the other groups
or something like that yes exactly right that's the key is which numbers can you leave out the
examiner does not want to see every single number on the chart in there right they need to see that
you can recognize what's most important here what needs to be included and those middle of the road
numbers leave them out but definitely mention all of the categories um last word on this guys if you
put in too many numbers you get a five for task just automatic that's what happened so yes guys
today's question is very important um if you want the complete system of strategies you can tell we
know what we're talking about for the writing exam guys check out our three keys writing course go to
allersenglish.com writing only all right awesome uh aubry thanks this was a a chalk chock-a-block
that's like a british term i think chock-a-block i love that chocolate
full i know i know this was really fun even though we don't love writing task 1 essays
we don't know how to write that i gotta do it i want to make it easier for you guys for sure
exactly all right aubry i'll see you next week all right bye bye