Key Vocabulary for Academic IELTS Task 1

Adjective & Adverbs

In your IELTS Task 1 essay, you are required to describe what you see in a chart, graph, table, map or
a diagram, most especially, to record changes in the data. To do this, you will use describing words,
that is, adjectives and adverbs.

• Adjectives are words that describe or modify nouns or pronouns.

• Adverbs are words that describe or modify verbs or adjectives.

Adverbs can generally be formed by adding ‘ly’ to the end of the adjective.

Here is a table of adjectives and adverbs relevant to Task 1 questions. Don’t try to learn them all.
This is only a very short essay (min. 150 words) so you won’t be able to include much detail.

Learn 2 or 3 words for large changes and 2 or 3 for small or moderate changes.

Large Changes:

Small or Moderate Changes:

Verbs & Nouns

You will also need some specific verbs and nouns.

• Verbs are words that describe an action or state.

• Nouns are words that refer to a thing, a place, a person or a quality.

Many words have a verb form and a noun form as can be seen in the tables below.
For your essay, you should learn 3 or 4 words for upward movement, 3 or 4 for downward
movement because you will probably have to write about changes in data.

Upward movement

Downward movement

The following words can be used to describe both upward and downward movements.

Finally, you will need a couple of phrases to describe situations that show little or no change.

Remember to use the appropriate verb tenses in your essay.

Collocations

Many of the words in these lists can be formed into collations that are ideal for expressing change.

There are two ways that you can create them:

• Verb + Adverb

• Adjective + Noun

Here are some examples:

Again, don’t try to learn them all. Just pick a couple that you feel comfortable using.

The following sentences illustrate how you might use some of this vocabulary in an IELTS Task 1
essay.

1) The price of houses went into sharp decline between 1980 and 1985 but increased
significantly from 1986 to 1990.

2) Over the whole time period, there was a steady growth in the number of women choosing to
study part-time but for men, the level fluctuated.

Other Useful Phrases

Here are a few more phrases that you may find useful.
Percentages, Proportions & Approximations

All chart, graphs and table in IELTS Task 1 questions contain numerical data. You will gain marks if
you are able to vary your language when you present this numerical data in your essay. Using
approximations and proportions are an ideal way to do this, so we’ll start with these as they are
useful for all types of IELTS Task 1 essay questions.

Approximations

Often, numerical data is expressed as percentages and you can use approximations to present this
form of data in a different way. Here are some examples:

You now have more than enough vocabulary to write a high-scoring Academic IELTS Task 1 essay.
Use the lists when you practice writing Task 1 essays. You'll soon become familiar with the
vocabulary and this will help you to choose which words and phrases to learn fully and memorise.

You’ll also find some useful vocabulary for making comparisons on this page:
Writing IELTS Task 1

– Grammar for Academic Task 1 Essays –

For Writing IELTS Task 1 essays, you are required to describe the detail in a chart, graph, table, map
or diagram, most especially, to record changes in data.

This will involve:

• Describing trends

• Describing increases and decreases

• Making comparisons

To do this, you will need to use particular sentence structures and these are one of the things we’ll
be learning about in this lesson.

We’ll also be looking at common Task 1 verb tenses and other elements of grammar that frequently
cause problems for students.

Here's an overview of the lesson:

1) Verb tenses

2) Key sentence structures

3) 2 Common grammatical errors

1) Verb Tenses

The choice of which tense to use will be determined by whether or not the graphic contains dates
and, if it does, whether the dates are in the past or the future.

Follow these guidelines:

• No date – use the present tense

• Dates in the past – use the past tense

• Dates in the future – use the future tense

The tenses you are most likely to need are:

– Present tense – present simple, present perfect or present perfect continuous

– Past tense – past simple

– Future tense – future simple or the future perfect

The table below gives explanations of these verb tenses and examples from Task 1 essays.

Common Writing IELTS Task 1 Verbs

Most graphics will require you to compare data from two or more time periods, for example, past
and present or present and future predictions, so you will need to use a range of different tenses in
your essay, as appropriate.

The key word in the sentence above is ‘appropriate’. Whilst you will gain marks for using a good
range of tenses in your Writing IELTS Task 1 essay, you should never do so just to show that you
know many different tenses. Only use the tense that is 100% correct for expressing a specific piece
of information. It is accuracy that the examiner is looking for.

2) Key Sentence Structures

The first two steps of writing a great Academic Task 1 essay are to:

• Analyse the question

• Identify the main features

I cover these tasks in detail in the lesson on How to Understand & Analyse Task 1 Questions.

Once you’ve done this, you'll understand what you’re required write about. It will be one or more of
these things:

• Describe trends

• Describe increases and decreases

• Make comparisons
There are specific sentence structures that you can use for each and these are what we’re going to
look at next.

How to Describe Trends

The two most useful grammatical structures for describing trends are:

1) Noun phrase + verb + adverb

For example,

The number of unemployed women fell significantly.

2) There + be + adjective + in + noun phrase

For example:

There was a dramatic improvement in the percentage of people in employment.

How to Describe Increases and Decreases

The two most useful grammatical structures for describing increases and decreases are:

1) Noun phrase + verb + adverb

For example,

The popularity of social media climbed steadily.

2) There + be + noun + in + noun phrase

For example,

There was a fluctuation in university applications.

There is now a swimming pool in the location of the old factory.

How to Make Comparisons

Useful vocabulary for making comparisons includes:

more

most

high (er) (est)

large (er) (est)

less

least

few (er) (est)

low (er) (est)

small (er) (est)

These words can be used to form many different sentence structures useful for making comparisons,
such as.

1) More/fewer/less + noun + than

For example,

More teenagers play computer games than a sport.

2) Most/least + adjective

For example,

The most common childhood illness in 1979 was chickenpox.

3) More/less + adjective + than

For example,

Cruises were more popular than beach holidays in 2012.

4) High/low/few -er + than

For example,

A lower number of teenagers play a sport than play computer games.

5) High/low/large/small -est

For example,

The largest proportion of immigrants came from Mexico.

These sentence structures are valuable tools for getting high marks for your Writing IELTS Task 1 essay,
so practice using them.
3) 2 Common Grammatical Errors

For many students, two aspects of grammar that are a particular problem are:

• Prepositions

• Articles

Prepositions

There are two specific prepositions that you will probably use numerous times in your Task 1 essay
when reporting change – ‘in’ and ‘of’. They are easy to get wrong.

Follow this general rule:

• When stating the specific value of the change (number, amount, percentage etc.) – use ‘of’.

• When stating what has changed – use ‘in’.

For example:

• An increase of 20%.

• An increase in the number of over 60’s taking exercise classes.

• A drop of almost a half.

• A drop in house prices.

• An improvement of 45 units per week.

• An improvement in retail sales from April to June.

‘Of’ is also used after a value. You will probably want to use proportional values in your Task 1 essay
so here are some examples.

• a small percentage of

• just under a quarter of

• exactly a half of

• roughly three quarters of

• a significant majority of

• a high number of

Another preposition to learn is ‘between’ which you will need to make comparisons. For example,

The price of houses went into sharp decline between 1980 and 1985 but increased significantly from
1986 to 1990.
Articles

Many languages do not have articles, and native speakers of those languages can find it a huge
challenge to remember to use them.

In English, there are three articles – the, a, and an. Each is used in specific instances.

1) With singular and plural nouns:

• Use the before singular and plural nouns when the noun is a specific thing. For example,

The bar graph illustrates how many male and female students were studying full-time and part-time
in Britain during the years 1970/1971, 1980/1 and 1990/1.

• Use a or an before a singular noun or noun phrase when the noun is non-specific and could
be any one of a group or type.

• Use a before a noun or noun phrase beginning with a consonant. Use an before a noun or
noun phrase beginning with a vowel.

For example,

Less than 30% of the population took a foreign holiday between 1975 and 1985.

There was an upward trend in families taking an annual holiday abroad after 1990.

2) Noun combinations:

Also, use a/an before adjective singular noun combinations such as these from our preposition list:

• a small percentage of

• an insignificant minority of

• a high number of

The key to improving your grammar is to know your weaknesses and focus on these as you practice
and when you check your work in the exam.