A GUIDE TO IETLS

A pathway to IELTS
This document is prepared for the IELTS TEST Takers and aspirants who are enthusiastic to learn
differently and hit the target beyond their expectation. It will help the test takers to prepare various
modules of IELTS efficiently with appropriate understanding of the test requirements.

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This document is exclusively written for the IELTS TEST Takers who are enthusiastic to learn
differently. There are total four modules in IELTS, viz. Listening, Reading, Writing and speaking.
The sequence of the examination is being carried out with listening as first module, reading as
second, writing as third and speaking as fourth.
Here, we will discuss about writing module. Writing module has two components, viz. i. writing
Task 1 and ii. Writing task 2.
Both the components are equally important to get high band score in this module. But if the test
taker doesnt answer the writing Task 2 then IELTS administration may cancel the writing band
score. It is said that the chance of obtaining high score in this module depends on how well test
taker has answered both the components as per the IELTS requirements. If we are able to
understand what are the requirements for IELTS writing modules then it is very easy to score high
in this module. Now lets start with the requirements of writing modules.
Writing Task 1: This is the simplest question among all the questions of all the modules in IELTS.
This task is designed to examine the test takers analytical ability within 20 minutes. It is definitely a
challenging task. Therefore, we need to understand what is called analytical ability before we
proceed to the next step. Analytical skills are the thought processes required to evaluate the
information effectively. The effectiveness depends on three factors such as visualization,
articulation and presentation power. If a test taker can prepare the answer for writing Task 1 based
on these three factors then he / she will be able to obtain the perfect score.
Now, we will discuss these three factors and then we will move to the next discussion. Well, all the
test takers are definitely familiar with these three words. So there is no need to explain the
definition of these words rather we will discuss how to achieve these three factors while answering
the writing task 1.
Visualization: - when we talk about data record of some events we must understand the
graphical representation of sets of data, chart or table. In IELTS examination the question
for writing task 1 is prepared based on data record of some events in any of these forms.
Therefore, visualization is one of the important factors while answering the writing task 1;
this is your first step to start preparing the answer. It is actually heedful observation of the
images before your eyes. When you see a graph, you must first see what the x axis (line
which is drawn from left to right horizontal line) component is and what the y axis (line
which is drawn from top to bottom vertical line) component is. Here we need to
remember one thing is that our visualization must capture the data from complete range of
x axis and complete range of y axis. The values / information which are placed on x axis are
basically independent variables means that these ranges are not dependent on any other
value / event in the graph, whereas the values / information which are placed on y axis are
fundamentally the measurement of data with respect to x axis. When you have seen data
for both the axes, you must jot down the range of data for x axis and y axis in your question
paper. Lets talk about an example which will help you to understand how to collect the
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information from the graph. I have given a simple graph to understand THE CONCEPT OF
INFORMATION COLLECTION.


Graph -1: Water use in km3 for various sectors with respect to time (Year) for Brazil and
Brunei.
In the above graph, we can see that x axis contains the information on time which is re-presented
in the form of year; y axis contains the information on values of water consumption of various
sectors. You must look into the units used for presenting the data in both axes. The units used in
this graph are year for time and km3 for water consumption in x axis and y axis respectively. You
must start jotting down the information in your visualization step. No, this will not be the right way
to start noting the data; you must read the question for writing task 1 and see what they are asking
you to answer. Question is read the information below in the graph for world water consumption
of two countries, summarize the information by selecting and reporting main features, make
comparisons where relevant. So what is the information you must note down from this graph? You
must note down quantity of water consumption for various sectors, time for water consumption,
maximum and minimum range, high demand sector, low demand sector, maximum consumption,
minimum consumption etc. Remember, you are asked to compare where relevant and therefore,
minimum and maximum range, increment and decrement from time to time, these information are
very important. Well, as we stated earlier we need to collect the values, their range and other data.
Therefore, you need to write down below information as a first step to start your answer.
a. Year 1900 to 2000
b. Water consumption 0 to 3000 km3.
c. Brunei and Brazil see the title below the graph.
d. Agriculture 3000 km3 (2000), 500 km3 (1900).
e. Industrial 1100 km3 (2000), 100 km3 (1900)
f. Domestic 490 km3 (2000) , 50km3 (1900)
g. 1900 to 1950 water consumption is low for industrial and domestic use.
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h. 1950 to 2000 high demand for industrial and less demand for domestic use.
i. Consumption in 1900 for agricultural > consumption in 2000 for domestic.
j. Agricultural consumption > all others sectors since beginning.
The values for Y axis are given with maximum range therefore, you need to approximate the values
of your own and IELTS administration will not see this in minute approximation. But definitely you
must be very close to the values while guessing. It must not happen that the value is presented in
the graph is twice or thrice than you approximated. Just look on above data how we approximated
the values with respect to graph. So all of us now are quite comfortable with collection of
information from the graph. Now, we will see how to collect the information from chart or table. This
is also very simple task if you have already understood the graph. The only difference between
graph and chart / table is you would not see x axis or y axis in these presentations of data. You
would see the information is presented for chart either in pie or doughnut format, for table it is
standard either with labels on the column and row or only row and only column. It is basically a row
vs. column representation. So collection of information from Table / chart is easier than Graph.
Lets look into a chart.

Pie chart 1: The average percentage of population of English speakers in English speaking
countries from 1993.
The chart is called pie chart. The best part of pie chart is that you dont require approximating any
value, most of the time, the values are provided in the pie chart. Here, it is provided on the right
hand side of the chart. Information here presented is the percentage of the population of native
English speakers. So which information you need to note down? Well, this is simple, first, read the
question. Question: See the information below presented in the chart of English speaking
population in the native speaking country, summarize the information by selecting and reporting
main features, make comparison while relevant. Question is very simple. Lets note down the
information.
a) Percentage of Population of English speakers.
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b) Reference English speaking countries and year 1993.
c) Highest USA 80%, lowest Australia 2%.
d) Australia > 1% higher than other countries.
e) UK (10 %) < USA (80%).
f) Total percentage of Canada, Australia and others = UK speakers.
g) UK leading Canada by 5% only.
Hope all of us have understood the tricks for collection of information form Graph and Chart.
We will now discuss about the information presented in the Table format.

Table 1: The percentage of farmers who learned the information about agriculture and livestock
issues through various sources such as radio, TV, extension office etc.
As we stated earlier table is formed based on row and column relationship. This relationship is
established based on certain data. So either row or column can be a reference for this kind of table
observation. Our observation says that row is our reference and column is our source of data. Now
lets see what question talks about. Question: See the information provided in the table 1
regarding percentage of farmers who received the information on two major issues agriculture and
Livestock from various sources, summarize the information by selecting and listing the main
features for information on farming issues and compare where relevant. We are now clear which
information we need to note down. We dont need to read the information for Livestock as it is not
asked in our question. We need to just focus on the data for farming issues. Here our references
are very trustworthy and somewhat trustworthy. Our information sources are Radio, TV, friends and
family etc. Country information is Ghana.
a. Very trustworthy :-
b. Country: Ghana, survey 2009.
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c. Information source Radio highest 58%
d. Others farmers lowest 42%
e. TV and friends / family are equal.
f. No information from Veterinarian.
g. Somewhat trustworthy :-
h. Information source Friends / family and other farmers highest 58%
i. TV lowest 42%
j. Radio second highest 29%.
k. No information from Veterinarian.
You must spend only 2-3 minutes to write down these data in your question paper near to the
Graph / Chart / Table. So this is the end of the visualization step for IELTS writing 1. Hope you
enjoyed the way of explanation and requirements of collection of data.
We have identified three factors associated with analytical skills in the beginning. We just finished
one of them i.e. visualization. Hope, no one is tired by this time. Lets start with another amazing
factor called Articulation. This factor is very important to obtain high band score in IELTS writing
1. This factor drives the quality of answer as excellent, good, very good and bad. We dont need to
understand here what the definition of this term articulation is; rather we will find the ways to
achieve this in our answer. There are various ways to achieve articulation while we write. The
important aspect is to express the contents of our writing in coherent verbal form. I mentioned
word coherent which means that the capability of thinking and expressing youre the ideas in a
clear and consistent manner. Further we learned word consistent, another powerful word which
defines that capability of structuring the contents orderly and logically. I think now everyone has
understood what the driving factors to achieve articulation while writing are.
IELTS question for writing Task 1 asks you to summarize the main features of the graphs, charts or
tables. So how to summarize the features always been a question before us. Everyone has
different choice of expressing the information. But in IELTS examination we cant express in our
ways, we need to articulate the contents as per their requirements. The requirements for IELTS
examination for summarizing the contents are as follows:-
i. Your contents must be coherent. It means that expression must be clear and well
defined. You must choose to keep lucid directions in your writing.
ii. Your writing must be consistent. It says that expression of our ideas or contents of
our writing must follow an order. The flow of information must be logically
interconnected.
iii. While you write and maintain above points you must see the important features of
the data presented in the question. We dont need to write each and every feature
of the data.
But most of the time IELTS questions ask us to compare the features wherever relevant. This
leaves us to understand the requirements of the comparison while answering the questions. IELTS
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examiner wants to see how well you have compared the information throughout the range of data
available with you. We must look into the main comparison specifically high, low, increment,
decrement, equal, no change etc. These comparisons must be made based on data presented in
the question.
We will discuss an example to understand summarization and comparison for IELTS writing Task
1. Lets look into the graph 1 in this booklet.
Graph1 talks about water consumption of various sectors viz. agriculture, industrial and domestic
use of Brazil and Brunei from 1900 to 2000. What we will compare here? What is the main aim of
this graph? Lets think from our own prospective. If we would have made this graph what we
wanted to present? Think, think and make your brain run with light speed. Remember your
comparisons must be succinct. Well, the main feature of this graph is to present the water
consumption of various sectors. Therefore, we need to compare the sectors with respect to years.
So we must compare that agriculture sector had highest amount of consumption than other two
sectors from the year 1960 to 2000. We must compare between industrial and domestic sectors
such as demand of water consumption has been increased in industrial sector throughout the year
1950 to 2000 from 100 Km3 to 1100km3 in comparison with very small increment in domestic
sector.
I hope the above stated comparisons have answered lots of your questions which you had in your
mind just couple of minutes ago. Now we will talk about summarization of the main features from
the graph / chart or Table. Summary means briefly giving the gist of something. It must be
compendious. I agree that it is very difficult to summarize from the variety of information but we
have no choice, we have to do it. Therefore, we must need to learn the art of summarization. The
art of summarization talks about identification of the subjects, information for which the graph /
chart / Table has been prepared and the references such as time, country and others.
Lets discuss an example on summarization. We have discussed the features for comparison for
Graph 1 and we will continue to discuss the summarization from this graph so that it will provide a
perceptiveness of what we are talking about. Graph1 has lots of information such as water
consumption (subject), information on increment / decrement for sectors agricultural, industrial
and domestic (the main theme of the graph), country, year (reference). In the first step at
visualization, we have almost finished 80% works for this step, here, we need to fine-tune our style
of writing and follow the points i, ii and iii. The information which we have collected in the
visualization step needs to be logically interconnected with coherence. We have points a through j
where all information regarding graph is identified. We need to interconnect them orderly. We can
start with as below.
- Mention the percentage of each sector with respect to years.
- Then provide information on each sector through 1900 to 2000.
- Interconnect them while explaining of particular sector.
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Hope you understood the basic steps of summarization.
The last step is presentation power. This is I term as a marketing power. You have to know how to
market yourself among others. Lets say you are in a class with 100 students. If you are determined
that you need to market yourself in the class then what will be your steps? Definitely you need to
start build the relationship with students. But you just cant make it overnight, therefore, you need
to practice some steps which you teach you how to deal with different people, what to speak,
when to speak, how to win a heart of a person etc. There are enormous numbers of ways to do this
but we need to learn the best effective way to market us. So the best way is to be interactive in the
class because all students are focused to some subjects in the class and if you start interaction
with professors then you will divert attention of students to you. You will be recognized, you will be
respected by everyone, you will be known by everyone. Now this is your turn to maintain a smooth
relationship with everyone through various steps such as hang out with friends, watching movie
together, organizing events, joining different clubs etc. Here we are talking about exactly the same
POWER which you need to use to market your writing to the IELTS administrator. Remember, your
presentation is an art of your writing. This art will earn high band score for you. But your grammar,
punctuations, use of tense, range of vocabulary must be present accurately while you are
answering TASK 1. You must not repeat the same words, conjunction etc. Always use synonyms,
use range of vocabulary as much as you can. Use the different types of sentence structures
frequently. Be careful about spelling. Dont write wrong spelling. If you are not sure about the
spelling of one word, use its synonym or use different sentence structure. But if you are not
confident about the sentence structure then it is better to write wrong spelling instead of writing
wrong sentence which may change the meaning of your expression.
Now, we will talk about standards which are required to be present while answering TASK 1. You
have total 20 minutes time for three steps visualization, articulation and presentation power. How
you manage your time to do all these three basic steps to obtain high band score. Time is an
important component for our all three steps. We will therefore, share this time in three steps.
See the time allocation below.
1. Visualization 3 minutes.
2. Articulation 2 min, in this step you need to understand flow of information to drive your
presentation. Once you are ready start with presentation step.
3. Presentation 13 min. Here you are actually writing on the answer sheet. Keep target to
write 15 words minimum per minute so that you can achieve 150 - 160 words for your Task
1. You are generally requested to write 150 words as minimum to answer this question. So
your writing speed need not be very fast but it needs to be moderate so that you can write
it clearly and cleanly.
4. Look out 2 min. This step will help you to rectify your mistakes if any while completing
step 3 above.
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So we have learned time management but we have not learned yet how to structure the step
number 3. You need to structure your presentation of writing in paragraph. You can write total 3-4
paragraphs to complete your TASK 1. However, now the question is how to write the paragraph? It
is a good question. Lets learn about it because this is another important fact which we need to
know to achieve high band. You must write about the graph / chart / table in 3-4 lines in your own
language. Please dont copy any sentence from the question. You can use the alternative words to
structure the sentence. Second paragraph must contain the information on summarization. Third
paragraph must be written to present the comparisons. The conclusion you must write in the fourth
paragraph and this is the last paragraph. How to write the conclusion? Just mention the main
features of the data record in 3-4 lines. The main features include specifically the aim of the data
record and your observation.
I tried my best to explain all steps / strategies in details. Now this is your turn to write down the
answer for Graph1, given in this booklet maintaining all steps carefully. If you are interested you
can send your answer to email id: Chandra_dharprasad@yahoo.com , we can discuss, we can
learn, we can improve and eventually we will become a skilled writer of IELTS TASK 1. Lets learn
and share our knowledge towards global development of this universe. Good Luck.
Please dont copy the contents of this booklet; this is an intellectual property of The Learner an
online portal (will be launched soon) of collection of various learning materials.
IELTS WRITING TASK 2 PREPARATION TIPS COMING SOON