IELTS Academic Task 1: What Is Different From General Training

Candidates who book the wrong practice material usually find out late. The Writing paper is the only part of IELTS where the Academic and General Training versions are genuinely different tasks, and the difference is all in Task 1.

Academic Task 1 gives you a chart, a table, a diagram or a map and asks you to describe it. General Training Task 1 gives you a situation and asks you to write a letter. Task 2 is an essay in both versions, with slightly different topic ranges. This page covers what changes, and what does not.

The split in one table

Both are worth one third of the Writing band, with Task 2 carrying the other two thirds. That ratio is identical in both versions.

What Academic Task 1 actually asks

The instruction is close to fixed: "Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant."

Read that sentence as three instructions, because it is three.

1. Summarise. Not transcribe. A reader who cannot see your chart should finish your answer knowing what it shows.
2. Select and report the main features. Selection is the skill being tested. A chart with twenty four data points does not want twenty four sentences; it wants the four or five facts that carry the shape.
3. Make comparisons where relevant. Numbers on their own are inert. "Sales reached 40,000 in 2019" says less than "sales in 2019 were double the 2015 figure".

There is a fourth requirement that is not in the instruction but is in the descriptors: an overview. One or two sentences naming the biggest pattern, with no individual figures in them. An Academic Task 1 answer without an overview is held down on Task Achievement regardless of how accurate the rest is. It is the single most reliable half band available in this task.

The structure that fits every chart type

Four paragraphs, and the same four every time.

1. Introduction. One sentence, paraphrasing the question. Change the nouns and the verb, keep the meaning, and do not copy the prompt word for word.
2. Overview. Two sentences. The largest movement, the highest and lowest categories, or the overall direction. No specific numbers here.
3. Body paragraph one. The first group of detail, with figures.
4. Body paragraph two. The second group, with figures and comparisons.

How you split the two body paragraphs depends on the visual. For a line graph over time, split by trend: things that rose in one paragraph, things that fell in the other. For a bar chart of categories, split by size: the large categories together, the small ones together. For a map, split by time period or by area. For a process diagram, split by stage.

A worked opening

The prompt: a line graph showing coffee and tea consumption in one country from 2000 to 2020, where coffee rises steadily and tea falls.

Weak version. "The graph shows the consumption of coffee and tea in a country between 2000 and 2020. In 2000, coffee was 2 kg per person. In 2005, it was 2.5 kg. In 2010, it was 3 kg. In 2015, it was 3.8 kg. In 2020, it was 4.5 kg. Tea was 3.5 kg in 2000, then 3.2 kg, then 2.8 kg, then 2.4 kg, then 2 kg."

Every number is correct and the answer is still weak. There is no overview, no comparison, and no selection; it is the chart read aloud.

Stronger version. "The line graph compares how much coffee and tea an average person in one country consumed each year between 2000 and 2020.

Overall, the two drinks moved in opposite directions across the period, and coffee overtook tea at around the midpoint. By 2020 the position at the start of the period had reversed completely.

Coffee consumption rose steadily throughout, from roughly 2 kg per person in 2000 to about 4.5 kg in 2020, a little more than double. The increase was fastest after 2010. Tea followed the opposite path, falling from 3.5 kg to 2 kg over the same twenty years, with the sharpest decline between 2010 and 2015."

Same data, and no rare vocabulary was needed. What changed was the overview, the selection of which figures to quote, and the comparative language: "opposite directions", "overtook", "a little more than double".

What General Training Task 1 asks instead

If you are sitting General Training, your Task 1 is a letter of at least 150 words, with three bullet points you must cover. The decision that sets your band is register.

1. Formal. To someone you do not know, in an institution. "Dear Sir or Madam", no contractions, "I am writing to request".
2. Semi formal. To a named person in an official relationship, a landlord or a manager you know. "Dear Mr Chen", polite but not stiff.
3. Informal. To a friend or family member. "Dear Anna", contractions fine, questions and warmth expected.

Mixing registers inside one letter is the common failure, and it costs marks in the same place a missing overview does in Academic. The three bullet points are not suggestions; a letter that covers two of them fully and skips the third is capped on Task Achievement.

What is identical in both versions

1. The four criteria and their names. Task Achievement, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy.
2. The nine band scale and the equal weighting of the four criteria.
3. The one to two weighting of Task 1 against Task 2.
4. The penalty for writing under the word minimum, and the fact that going well over it costs you time you need for Task 2.
5. Task 2 is an essay in both, though General Training prompts tend to be more everyday in subject matter.

So the preparation that transfers is Task 2 preparation, and the preparation that does not transfer is the whole of Task 1. If you have been practising letters and you are booked on Academic, the twenty minutes of your exam that need the most specific technique are the twenty minutes you have not practised.

What to do today

Find one line graph and one bar chart, and write only the overview for each. Two sentences, no figures, ten minutes total. That is the part most answers are missing and the part that is quickest to fix.

Then write one full Task 1 answer under time and put it into Bandly, which returns an estimated band for each of the four criteria along with the sentences behind each estimate. The bands are model estimates rather than marked results, so read them as a pointer to your weakest criterion, and check first whether Task Achievement found an overview in what you wrote.