hi there it's asiya and today i've prepared for you a full ielts
academic writing task 1 essay and i'll explain you how you should
write it this task has three pie charts which is
quite common in ielts today and if after watching this lesson you feel like
you want to learn all my technique and how to write each
type of task one essay my online course will be linked in the
description box below and now let's get started
here is our task the charts below show the average
consumption of three nutrients by adults in the uk
all of these nutrients may be unhealthy if eaten too much summarize
the information by selecting and reporting the
main features and make comparisons where relevant write at least 150 words
and we have the title of our charts daily consumption of sodium saturated
fat and added sugar by adults in the uk
and we can see that the first chart shows
sodium the second one is about saturated fat
and the last one is about added sugar and we can see how much of
each ingredient what proportion of each ingredient
adults eat with their breakfast lunch dinner and snacks so that's the
information we have and please note that in the topic
in the second sentence they told us that all of these nutrients
may be unhealthy if eaten too much that means that we should analyze the
numbers and decide which numbers are not high
and are likely to be healthy and which are too high and are likely to be
unhealthy when you write a task 1 report it's
really important to only use the information you are
given because perhaps you know that those ingredients those
nutrients are healthy but you shouldn't mention it
unless it's given in the task like in our case okay now let's talk about
the essay structure in order to achieve at least a band 7
for your essay you must logically organize it so let me
show you a typical task one structure that you can use for any task one essay
you always start with an introduction that's where you simply paraphrase the
task it's by far the easiest and quickest way
to write it and you don't need to include
anything else here your introduction should be short
then an overview that's perhaps the most important part of your task 1
report that's where you provide this general
summary of the main trends you describe the
broad picture and the overview should be one two maybe three sentences
long really not that much and quite often
i don't include any numbers in figures in the overview at
all or you may include a couple of the most
important ones but really don't go into detail
think how could i describe all that in one sentence or two sentences
that's your overview and you can write it in different places
it can go right after the introduction and it can be in a separate paragraph or
it can actually be in the same paragraph with the introduction
it's up to you you can also leave your overview until the end
and write it after your body paragraphs that's what i do quite often but there
is one danger if you leave the overview until the end
and then you'll be running out of time and you don't finish it that's a big
problem because your task achievement score will
suffer a lot if you're running out of time it's
better not to finish your body paragraph than to skip your overview and in this
sense it's simply safer to write it right
after your introduction then we write body paragraphs
sometimes we have two we may have three but you should have at least
two because you need to show to the examiner
that you can logically organize information and you're not gonna
just write all the information in the same paragraph
okay two or three body paragraphs and then that's the part that causes a
lot of confusion but in task 1 you don't need a conclusion
a conclusion is what we write in task 2 where we summarize our ideas
and give our opinion if their asks for it
but in task 1 we never give our opinion and we don't really summarize our ideas
either right we just summarize the information
we're given and that's what we call an overview
so an overview replaces the conclusion and sometimes because people write it at
the end you may look at the essay and think or
there is a conclusion and they're saying but
no you don't need one trust me now let's have a
look at our essay here is my introduction
the three pie charts give information about the proportion of sodium saturated
fat and added sugar in the typical news of
uk adults excessive consumption of
any of those nutrients is considered to negatively affect one's health in my
introduction i simply paraphrased the task
and we could compare them the task says the charts below and i said the three
pie charts i simply added some words
show was replaced by give information about or provide information
on the average consumption of three nutrients
are replaced by
information about the proportion of sodium saturated fat and added sugar
so i named those nutrients straight away and then i added in the typical meals
that's something i've taken from the charts
and the tasks said adults in the uk and i said uk adults i simply
changed the order words but i repeated words
the second sentence was all of these nutrients may be
unhealthy if eaten too much and i wrote excessive consumption of
any of those nutrients is considered to negatively affect one's health as you
can see the idea is the same and
yes you do need to paraphrase words you shouldn't
copy phrases from the task but it doesn't mean that you have to
replace every word as you can see i've repeated many of
them consumption nutrients
adults health and so on and i will use those words a number of
times throughout my report because these are
key words of our task and you don't need to paraphrase them
if i wrote an overview after the introduction
it would be here but mine is at the end so let's talk about the body paragraphs
you need to logically organize information in your
body paragraphs and you need to have at least two
so what are the ways to split information into body paragraphs
in our task i can see at least two the first way is to simply describe
each chart in a separate body paragraph the easier way then you would have three
body paragraphs we could also concentrate on describing
each meal breakfast and all the nutrients
consumed for breakfast lunch dinner snacks but then we can't write four
body paragraphs right then we need to group similar data
together and i can see a way to do that if you
have a look at our charts you can see that for breakfast and lunch
people don't eat too much of any of those nutrients
the proportions are quite low and i would say that those meals can be
considered healthy but when eating dinner and snacks
people consume a lot of at least one of those nutrients and that can be
considered unhealthy and describing breakfast and
lunch in one body paragraph and describing
dinner and snacks in the other body paragraph is a more
advanced way to organize the essay because it shows that you can
really analyze the information but you can choose either of the ways
i'm going to choose the letter and let's have a look at the first body
paragraph the first two meals of the day breakfast
and lunch appeared to be quite healthy with a
relatively even distribution of nutrients
that's my topic sentence and i've already told
what i've learned about those two meals now i'm gonna go into more detail
a typical breakfast is the lightest meal of the day
which contains between 13 and 16 of each nutrient
as you can see in the first part of the sentence i make a claim
breakfast is the lightest meal of the day
and then i provide some figures to support it
it contains between 13 and 16 percent of each nutrient
and it's important not to give too many details
because i think it's not important to know which
nutrient was 13 and which was 16 there is no big difference there
and i simply give the range next for lunch people consume
between 20 and 28 of the nutrients with added sugar being the lowest and
sodium the highest so here the range is a bit
wider and i told which one is the lowest which
one is the highest and we know that the third nutrient is
somewhere in the middle and again it's not that important to know where
exactly it is i omitted this number when you write
your task 1 report it's important to make some statement
make a claim and then support it with your numbers
if you give too many details it's problematic
but if you don't give any numbers at all it's not good either you need to strike
the right balance in order to achieve a higher
score for my grammar i am varying my sentence structures
if you have a look at the second and third sentences
one is about breakfast the second one is about
lunch but sentence structures are different in the first one i said
a typical breakfast is and in the last one
for lunch people consume you see these are different structures and then
i added some extra information to both of those sentences
but in a different way
in the sentence about breakfast i said the lightest meal of the day which
contains and then gave the numbers and in the
last one i said with added sugar being the lowest
so again these are different sentence structures
and even though my sentences are not very long
my sentence structures are complex and that what brings
a higher score in your task one and actually in task two
two let's read the second body paragraph on the other
hand demand snacks appear to be less balanced
out of all the meals dinner contains the largest proportions of sodium and
saturated fat 42 and 39 of daily
intake respectively however when snacking people eat the most
added sugar 45 percent as well as slightly more
sodium and saturated fat than for breakfast
in the charts you get a lot of information
and a lot of different figures and you need to
choose the key features the most important numbers
such as the highest numbers and that's what i reported
in this body paragraph also in your task 1 as well as your task 2
you need to use a number of formal linking words and other linking
devices such as on the other hand
out of all the means and however let me show you my overview that's where
i give this broad picture and explain what i've
learned in one or two sentences overall the first two meals of the day
eaten by adults in the uk are relatively balanced and healthy
whereas dinner contains the most sodium and saturated fat
most of the added sugar is in snack foods
are you surprised to see this last word here
foods let me explain when we talk about food in general
it's uncountable but when we mean different kinds of it it's countable
foods the phrase snack foods means different
kinds of snacks okay when you write your overview give
general trends don't give numbers or just
a couple of numbers and don't give any details
and if sometimes you run out of time before you finish
both answers write your overview right after the introduction to be on
the safe side speaking about conclusions you don't
need one in task 1 academic we write an overview
instead of a conclusion this essay is 198
words long if you aim for band 7 i would say your essay should be between
170 and 180 words long in this case you can
finish it a little bit more quickly and have more time to check it
hopefully and some people ask if they lose points for longer essays
if it's a beautifully written essay where everything is correct
no you don't lose any points you just have more space to develop your ideas
but if a longer essay means that you simply make
more mistakes than perhaps years don't write an essay longer than you
really need to i know that you may have questions that
we haven't touched only in this video such as how to select the information
for your report which numbers to include and which not
to include which verb tenses to use in your essays
how to write essays on different types of tasks
i've described all that in my online course
fast track ielts academic task 1 and i'm going to link it
in the description box below if you are looking for more free materials
then feel free to download my task 2 workbook
in the pdf format and watch this other video
with a sample answer for task 2. thank you for watching me today good
luck with your preparation and your exam bye