 Hi everyone, Chris here from IELTS Advantage and in today's live lesson, what we're going to look at is writing task one academic. If you're a general training person, this is not for you. You can go on our YouTube channel and check out a lot of free resources for general training. This is strictly for academic students and we're going to break everything down and simplify everything because when you guys see something like this, so a question like this, often you get very confused, like what's happening here? What do I even write about? Time is an issue, you only have 20 minutes, so a lot of people underestimate just how important it is to get this right and even though it's worth just a third of your total mark, in order to be getting a seven or above, you need to get a good score for both task two and task one. Most of the students who I work with, they focus solely on task two and they very rarely talk about task one and often this is the reason why they don't get the score that they need. Their task two is pretty good because they spend most of their time preparing for that area and most of their time during the test on that area but they don't spend enough time on task one academic so that's what we're going to look at in today's lesson and we're going to give you six simple steps that you can follow in order to improve your task one academic performance. All of the things that we're going to talk about today are covered in a lot more detail on our free fundamentals course. We cover not only task one academic, but we cover task two writing, we cover task one general training, speaking, reading, listening, it's totally free, all you have to do is just click the link above or below this video and you can sign up for our free course. Let's get into this. So why is this such a difficult task? So you might get a line graph like this, you might get a bar chart, you might get just a table with data in it, you might get a pie chart, you might get multiple charts, you might get process diagrams, you might get maps. So one of the things that is quite difficult about this is people are not used to writing about data like this. They're not used to interpreting the data, trying to find the key features, writing overviews, paraphrasing, writing details, paragraphs, it's just unfamiliar to you, but it doesn't need to be that difficult. It's actually quite straightforward once you understand exactly what you need to do and you practice and prepare and then you'll be ready for testing. So we're going to give you six simple steps. So step one, understand the marking criteria. You need to intimately understand what these mean, so task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy. Understand what the examiners want because if you don't understand what the examiners are looking for, then how are you going to give it to them? So this whole step, I could make a 20 or 30 minute video just on this. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to skip this first step and I'm going to make another video, it's going to be a long like 20, 25 minute video, just covering this because this is a little bit complicated. It'll be new to you and I think it deserves its own video. So check that out. I'm going to make that on probably Friday or Monday this week. I'm going to cover exactly what these mean and simplify the terms for you so that you can understand what the examiners are looking for and give it to them. So check that out later this week. Step two, once you understand what the examiners are looking for, you know what the marking criteria means and you know how to give the examiners what they're looking for, then we can start looking at the question. Step two, understand the data. Why is this important? Well, you have to write about the data. If you don't understand the data, how are you going to write about it? How are you going to write about it effectively? And the problem is that either students don't understand the data or, more importantly, don't spend enough time actually interpreting the data, analyzing the data and thinking about it before they start writing. So it's really important that you do this and let's have a look at a typical question. So obviously this is not what a real IELTS question will look like for the purposes of my Jamboard here. I've just put a typical line chart to help you understand it. So when you first look at this, a lot of people go into panic boat. They're like, this looks so complicated. I don't know anything about this topic. I don't know anything about this data. But once you start looking at them and once you start getting used to them, there's nothing to be afraid of really. So let's have a look at this. So we have four lines. We've got a blue line, we've got a red line, a green line and a yellow line. And it just goes from 2000 up to 8000. So let's look at what the data actually says. The blue line stays pretty much stable. It stays around the same value around 2000. The red line starts off the lowest and then goes up to pretty much the highest. So it just increases over time. The green line fluctuates over time and goes up here to the highest point and then starts off here at its lowest point and then goes back down. So it fluctuates throughout time. And the yellow one starts off the biggest and ends up the lowest and it goes down over time. So once you start getting used to all of these line charts and bar charts and pie graphs and data, you start to see patterns. So you must practice these questions and you must take the time to actually think about these and simplify them. Try and boil it down, try and simplify it so that it's very easy for you to explain. Imagine you're speaking to somebody and you have to explain what this means in just one sentence or two sentences. If I had to do this, I'd say, well, blue stays the same, red goes up, yellow goes down and green fluctuates. That's it. Once you break it down and simplify it, it becomes much, much easier to understand and then to write about. But you must practice this. It is a skill that you need to develop. You need to look at lots and lots of questions and try to interpret the data and try and understand it. And once you start to do that, it becomes so much easier. Don't look at like one or two of them and then go in on test day and be like, oh, task one was really difficult. Task one was really difficult because you made it difficult by not looking at any other, apart from one or two things that you did before the test. Look at lots of them. Look at ones with sample answers, good sample answers and look at the data first, interpret it, think about what the main points are and then look at the sample answer and compare what you think with the sample answer and that will really, really help you understand the data. In terms of time, I would spend at least five minutes just looking at the data, thinking about it and planning out what you're going to write before you even start writing because the task one academic is not just a writing task, it's a thinking task. You have to think about the data and understand it before you start writing. So give yourself that time. Don't look at it and immediately start writing like most people do because then you'll mess it up. Step three, paraphrase the question. So you're going to get some sort of data like this and then you're going to have the question above here. First sentence, your first paragraph is simply paraphrase the question. So how do you get better at paraphrasing the question? So number one, learn what paraphrasing is. It's not just synonyms. There's a lot more to it than that. You can have a look at my website if you want. So let's have a look at my website. If you go into IELTS Advantage, you'll find all the help you need and just have a look and you can even type in here anything you're looking for. So if you need help with paraphrasing, just type in paraphrasing and learn all about it. Just type in IELTS Advantage paraphrasing and you'll get lots of information about how to paraphrase. But this is the key step. Attempt to paraphrase lots of questions. If you need to get better at running, what do you do? You don't read a book on running. You go running. If you need to become stronger, you don't read a book on how to lift weights. You go and lift weights. If you need to get better at paraphrasing, paraphrase. Whenever I tell people this, they don't like it. Most students who they say, how do I become better at paraphrasing? They want me to tell them some secret tip or some magic formula which doesn't exist. Just like anything else in life, in order to get better at something, you need to do it and you need to get feedback on it and then you need to take action on that feedback. So if you want to improve your paraphrasing, learn how to paraphrase, get feedback from somebody who knows what they're doing, a good teacher and then take action on that feedback. So let's look at an example from one of my students. So a student who I was working with recently and this was the question. The graph shows the stock price of four different technology companies in the USA between 2001 and 2018. So I asked them to paraphrase this. Here's what they put. Chart eliminates value of cutting edge conglomerates in America in 2001 and 2018. So is this good? Well, it's good that they attempted it. They're way above 99% of other students because 99% of other students wouldn't even attempt to paraphrase this. But the key is that they made lots of mistakes and that's not a problem. The key is that I gave them feedback and they took action on that feedback. They learned from the feedback and then they really, really improved and their paraphrasing was no problem and they went on and got the score that they needed. So let's have a look at some of the mistakes that they made. So the graph chart. So they're missing a article here. So I said to them, why did you not put an article in here? Why did you not put the here? And they said, well, I didn't want to repeat any words. I said, well, why is that? Oh, well, my old teacher told me that you're not allowed to repeat any words. Well, that's not true. Paraphrasing does not mean changing every single word and it certainly does not mean that you can't include like an article or a preposition or something like that. If you repeat the and the, it's not like the examiner is going to look at your writing and go, oh my God, they repeated a word, they're terrible. Because it's a normal use of English. So that was the first mistake. Illuminates, why did you use illuminates? And they said, oh, I downloaded this list of band nine vocabulary and they told me that if I use illuminates instead of shows, then the examiner is going to be really impressed. It's like, they're not going to be really impressed. It is a big word, but it's totally inappropriate to use that in those circumstances. The stock price, whoop, sorry, delete it up. The stock price, the value. It's a big difference between the value of a company and the stock price of a company. So if you go and look up any company, like the value of Microsoft right now is around a trillion dollars, but their stock price is not a trillion dollars. Their stock price is, I'll tell you this now, let's look at Google. Google stock is 1,000, about a thousand dollars. So their stock price and their value, their overall value are two different things. So you need to be very careful when you're changing things that it means the same thing. So it's okay to use synonyms, but make sure that you're using synonyms that actually mean the same as the thing that you're changing. The value of a company and the stock price are two different things. You could say stock value, and that would be fine, but they're two different things. Cutting edge conglomerates. Again, you're trying to be too fancy. This doesn't really make any sense. No one would ever say, oh, I'm thinking of getting a job in a cutting edge conglomerate. Like, what the hell are you talking about? You want a job in a tech company? Oh yeah, so by being trying to be too fancy and they misspelt this word, so this is wrong. Cutting edge doesn't really mean the same as technology. You know, you can be a cutting edge farmer. You can be a cutting edge baker. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're a technology company. Again, just because they're ex-teacher, they're former teacher, told them, in order to get high scores, you should use words like illuminates and conglomerates and all these big fancy words when really it's lowering their score and they're in a lot of trouble. In 2001 and 2018, between 2001 and 2018, two different things. So this person learned that you can repeat words if it's okay to do that. Don't try and be too fancy. Just keep it simple. Accuracy over trying to use fancy vocabulary and make sure when you're changing something that it actually means the same when you're changing it. So you need to be very careful, but the way to do it is to actually do it, mess it up, fail multiple times when you're trying to do this and then get feedback and take action on it. And this person did a great job and got the score that they needed once they fixed all those mistakes. Step four, write a clear and effective overview. A clear overview and an effective overview. What does effective mean? Well, it has the key features in it. What is clear when the person reads it, they understand, just read it once. They can clearly understand what you think the key features are. Step four, this is probably the most important step. Without a clear and effective overview, you forget about getting a seven or above. You cannot do it. Many, many people struggle for years with Task One academic because they never learn this. It doesn't matter how much work you put in. It doesn't matter how good your grammar and vocabulary get. It doesn't matter how good your structure is. If you don't learn how to write a clear overview, you're never going to improve. So really, really focus on this. So there's many, many ways that you can use many techniques, many strategies that you can use in order to find the key features and that's what you need for the overview. I'm gonna just show you one. I can't show you everything and the techniques and strategies differ depending on whether it's a map or a process diagram or multiple charts or pie charts or line graphs or differs a lot. There's no one way to find the key feature. But let me show you just one way and show you how easy it is once you know how and once you've been shown properly what to do. So one way with a line graph over time is just to ask this question. What is the purpose? So the purpose of this is to show changes in four things over time. So from 2001 to 2018 to show how four things have changed. So how have they changed? This one has stayed relatively the same. This one has gone up. This one has gone down and this one fluctuates. Doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. Guess what you put in your overview. One goes up, one goes down, one fluctuates, one stays the same, that's it. No detail, you don't need to mention any values. You just need to talk generally about what happened and what are the key features. And there's four things here over time and all you had to do was just ask yourself that one question. So I'm not demonstrating how to find the key features for any map or any process diagram or any type of data. Just for this type, you just ask yourself one question. You'll be able to find it pretty quickly. Step five, write a clear and effective details paragraphs. All right, so first you write your introduction which is paraphrasing the question, then your overview. Now you need to write your details paragraphs. And this is what it would look like. Now, a lot of you right now in the comments are asking, oh, you put your overview there. Why not put your overview at the end and where's the conclusion and all these questions that we normally get? To be honest, it doesn't matter whether you put your overview here or whether you put your overview here. It doesn't matter. A lot of you worry about this and spend a huge amount of time worrying about this but spend very, very little time thinking about whether you wrote a clear and effective overview and whether you wrote clear and effective details paragraphs. Focus on writing these effectively. Don't worry too much about where you put it because it doesn't really matter. And in task one academic, there is no conclusion. There's an overview. A conclusion is a summary of your main ideas. There's no main ideas here because you're not writing about what you think, you're just reporting the data. So you've done this, you've done this, now you need to do this and this. And the reason why I order them like this is because it's much easier to start off with a kind of 30,000 foot view, introduce the general topic, okay, I understand what that is. What are the key features? Go a little bit down and then go into the details. You would never have a conversation with someone where you immediately jump into the details of a conversation. You would introduce the topic, talk about it generally and then go into the details. So you're making it much easier for you to write the report and you're also making it much easier for the examiner to understand it. Because if you introduce the question and then talk about the details and then talk about the overview at the end, it's a little bit confusing. So that's what you do. And how do you write about details? Again, I don't have time to talk about this in a lot of detail, but let's say for example, you wanted to write about this green line. How could you do that? Well, you just break it up into different parts. So from 2001 to this point, it went from 2000 to about 6000. And then from this point to this point, this point to this point, and this point to this point. And just breaking it down, simplifying it, would make it very easy for you to write about that. So details paragraph number one, I would just pick two of the lines. I'll talk about that because there's four lines. Talk about that there. The other two lines, talk about that there. Making it really clear and making the examiner aware that you are aware of organization and you've organized your thing effectively. And then just write about them. Write about the key details. Don't overcomplicate it. And once you've done all that, step six, check your work. So the first five minutes should be just thinking and planning about the data. And then the next 10 minutes should be writing. And you're not going to write that much. You're only going to write between like 150 and 200 words. You should be able to do that in 10 or 12 minutes. And then the last sort of five to two to five minutes, you're going to check your work. You're just going to go through this checklist. Is my paraphrasing effective? Are my key features correct? Is my overview clear? Are my details accurate? Are my details paragraphs clear? Is my grammar accurate? Is my vocabulary accurate? And if you're able to do all of those things and check your work and fix a few mistakes, then you're giving yourself a very good chance of getting the score that you deserve. And here's a summary of the six steps. Number one, understand the marking criteria. I'll make another video on that Friday or Monday, depending on how much time I have. Number two, understand the data. Number three, paraphrase the question. Number four, write an effective overview. And your details paragraphs, then check your work. And that's it. That just breaks everything down and makes it as simple and as easy as possible. Rather than you looking at something like this and being like, I don't even know where to start. I don't know what to do. Oh, time is running out. Let's just write the first thing that I can think of and don't worry about it. Task one isn't important anyway. It is very, very, very important. So as we mentioned at the beginning of the video, if you want more detail on that, you can check out our fundamentals course. We even give you a task at the end of that and it covers task two, speaking, reading, listening. It's totally free. Just click the link above or below the video. Or if you want more information on IELTS, go to our main website. It's all free, IELTSAdvantage.com. Just type in IELTSAdvantage into Google and it'll take you there. We have a nice little feature here. All our success stories. You can get our resources up here. Task one, task two, speaking, reading, vocabulary, listening. Everything you need in order to succeed in the IELTS test. Hopefully you find that interesting and valuable and if you need anything, feel free to get in touch with us. Chris at IELTS Advantage is my email. If you have any questions about the IELTS test, feel free to get in touch and you'll find all of that on our website as well. Thank you very much, guys and see you again soon. Bye-bye.