- Hi there.
It's Michelle from IELTS Advantage.
Let us talk about vocabulary
for an academic task one answer.
So what we're going to focus on today
is a really common key mistake
that students make
that stops them from getting a seven for vocabulary.
I'm going to show you what it is.
We're going to do a little bit of practice.
And then at the end, I'm going to give you a task
that I would like you to complete, just a short one.
But if I gave it to you now,
I think that a lot of you would find it quite difficult.
And I'm hoping that after this short lesson
you're going to find it much, much easier.
So in an academic task one question, right,
you often get a line graph
and the line will either go up
or it'll go down or it'll stay the same,
or it'll go up and down and up and down.
And so what a lot of students focus on
is the vocabulary or the words
to talk about that line going up, or that line going down.
And often that takes the form of a list of words.
So you might even have
one of these lists in your own notebook.
So it'll be words to talk about increasing.
So we would have rise, grow, rocket, soar.
You might have another list
to talk about the line going down,
decrease, fall, drop, plummet.
And it's true that you do need to have enough vocabulary
to talk about things increasing and things decreasing.
But this is definitely not the thing
that is going to get you a seven for vocabulary.
So focusing on this is the wrong thing to focus on.
So to illustrate this to you,
I'm going to give you a sentence.
Well, in a minute, I'm going to show you the graph,
but I'm not going to show it to you yet.
Okay. I'm just going to give you a sentence
and the sentence is going to be describing
one of the categories on the graph.
And all I want you to do is I want you to think
and imagine if you can,
like what kind of information this graph is displaying
and basically what the graph is about.
See if you can do it, okay?
So here's the sentence.
The sentence is: beauty increased dramatically
over the period.
That's it.
So ask yourself does this makes sense?
Can you picture in your head what in the world
this graph is about?
Now how about if I change the word increase
and I say beauty grew dramatically,
or beauty rose dramatically over the time period.
Does it make it any easier to know what I'm talking about?
I think it doesn't.
I think you probably,
in your mind, you can probably picture a line going up
but that's it.
Now compare that sentence,
beauty increased dramatically, with this sentence,
and see if it makes it any easier
for you to picture or visualize more or less roughly
what the graph is about.
So here's a sentence.
The amount of money
that British people spent on beauty products
increased dramatically over the period.
Now with that sentence, I think suddenly,
I hope suddenly it makes a lot more sense.
And the difference
between the first sentence and the second sentence
this is the thing that students sometimes forget about
when they are writing task one answers.
You always have to think about
what is going up and what is going down.
And the vocabulary that the examiner is looking for is
whether or not you can talk about that thing that's going up
or that thing that's going down.
Do you have enough vocabulary
to talk about the thing that's increasing or decreasing?
Not just how many words do you know
instead of increase,
and how many words do you know instead of decrease;
this isn't important
because this isn't really the communication that's required.
And it never forget that the IELTS test
is a communication test.
So we're going to look at that graph now,
beauty isn't the only category.
So I'm going to show you how you can use some
of the information that you get on a graph
to really talk about the thing that's going up
and the thing that's going down.
And then after that,
I'm going to give you your own graph to practice with.
All right so here is the chart.
It may or may not look anything like
what you had pictured in your head,
but it's all about changes
in average annual UK consumer spending.
So we were talking about beauty.
You can see that is the red line and it goes up.
Of course without looking at this chart,
just hearing the sentence beauty increased
means absolutely nothing.
So how can you use the information
that's given in the chart
to actually talk about what is going up
and what is going down?
Let's look at groceries.
So groceries is the blue line.
The beginning of the period, it's about 150 pounds.
And by the end of the period,
it's a bit less, around 130 pounds.
So we know now that we can't say over time
groceries goes down.
Now looking at the title is going to help.
You need to know what consumer spending means.
If you don't, it's going to make it more difficult.
But usually the language in the titles
isn't that complicated.
So consumer spending, if I was really stuck, I could say
annual UK consumer spending on groceries went down.
Now what the examiner is really looking for though
is whether or not you can say this using different words.
So how can you paraphrase annual UK consumer spending?
Well, think about just in your head
if you know what this means.
So maybe you might make like a,
maybe like a picture in your head.
Like if you had to draw it, what would you draw?
You know, you're playing the game,
like Pictionary where you got to draw things
and people guess.
What would you draw if you were drawing this?
And then try to use different words in your sentence.
So I would say like for beauty products,
I said the amount of money people spent on groceries
decreased over the period.
But there's other ways I could say it as well.
I could say the amount of money people spent on groceries
in the beginning of the period was greater
than the amount of money people spent
at the end of the period.
So I could compare amount of money spent greater
than at the end.
Let's look at books and newspapers,
so we can see the yellow line goes down.
Now, you know that you can't say
books and newspapers decreased, right?
You can't say books went down,
it doesn't mean anything anyways.
So what exactly went down?
Well we're talking about how much money
people spent on these three things.
Which people are we talking about?
Well we're talking about British people.
A different way of saying that,
people in the UK, British people, either one is fine.
And it's a way of paraphrasing this.
And consumer spending,
the amount of money that people spend on something.
So again, spending,
now I could say the amount of money people spent on books,
or I could say spending on books and newspapers
fell over the entire period.
So that is how I would use this information
to help me talk about what exactly went up
and what exactly went down.
This is the vocabulary that the examiner
is really paying attention to.
Not how many different words for increasing
and how many different words for decreasing
has the candidate used?
But rather are you able
to essentially translate this information
from graph form to sentence form?
And if all you say is beauty products increased
it means you can't.
That is not the information being conveyed
with this line on this graph.
That information that's being conveyed here
is how much money people spend on beauty products.
Now here's your chart, all right?
It's UK music consumption.
So the title is going to help you.
We've got four categories,
streaming, CD, vinyl and downloads.
You definitely know what music means.
Consumption to consume.
What does consume mean?
Well, if I am very hungry,
I can consume an entire pizza by myself.
Now that means I eat pizza.
Obviously I don't eat music.
So think about what it means to consume music.
Again, if you can get a picture of this in your head,
it might help you actually talk about what is going up
and what is going down.
Streaming, I think everybody knows.
Downloads, I'm positive everybody knows.
CD, obviously.
Vinyl, well, if you don't know what vinyl means,
before you check your dictionary, just guess,
because it has something in common with all of these things
it has something to do with music.
So you might be able to guess anyways,
and then if you want you can check your dictionary.
So this is the chart I would like you to use
to answer the questions.
Right. Now, using the graph that I just showed you,
what I'd like you to do is write four sentences.
One sentence for each of the categories
describing the changes over time.
By the way, this is also the overview.
So if you can do this, you can write the overview.
Now, you know after this lesson
that it's not enough just to say downloads decreased, right?
You need to think about what exactly decreased.
So four sentences, one for each of those categories,
and then compare your answer with other students
and really pay attention to the language that they used
for talking about the thing that increases
and the thing that decreases,
because this is exactly
what the examiner is paying attention to
when they are grading your task one answer.
Now, if you found this useful
and you would like more help and more advice
increasing your IRLT scores,
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Bye everyone, and good luck on the task.
(upbeat music)