 Hi there, it's Michelle from IELTS Advantage. Let's 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 kind of 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 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 you might 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 you know, 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 make 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 know, you probably, you know, 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 kind of 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 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 have 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 increase 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 you know, 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 or like a picture area 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 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 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 is 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 use 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 IELTS scores, please remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Bye everyone and good luck on the task.