Guides / Task 1 mechanics
IELTS Task 1 Key Features: Which Numbers to Include and Which to Leave Out
Most Task 1 answers that score badly are not badly written. They are badly chosen. The candidate reads twelve numbers off the chart, puts all twelve into sentences, and runs out of words before saying anything about what the chart shows.
Task 1 asks you to select. The instruction in the task tells you to summarise the information and report the main features. That word, select, is the whole job. This post shows you one data set, three different selections from it, and what each selection costs.
What "key features" means in the marking
Academic Task 1 is marked on four criteria, each carrying equal weight. The first is Task Achievement, which is where selection is judged. The other three are Coherence and Cohesion, which covers organisation and paragraphing; Lexical Resource, which is vocabulary; and Grammatical Range and Accuracy.
The public band descriptors for Task Achievement describe the same idea at every band, with the quality of the selection changing as you move up.
At the lower bands, the response may present information without a clear purpose, or copy out detail with no overview of what it means. At band 6, key features are covered but the detail may be irrelevant or mechanical. At band 7, key features are clearly presented and highlighted. At band 8, the selection is skilful.
Read that carefully. Nowhere does it ask for completeness. A response can include every figure in the chart and still fail to present a key feature, because a list of numbers makes no claim about which of them matter.
An overview is the one or two sentences that state the main pattern without figures. It is the clearest place a reader can see whether you selected anything at all, and our guide to the Task 1 overview works through how to write one for each visual type.
The data you are given is not the answer
Take this practice visual. It is a table showing the percentage of households with home internet access in four countries, in 2000, 2010 and 2020.
| Country | 2000 | 2010 | 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Japan | 30 | 78 | 92 |
| Brazil | 3 | 27 | 71 |
| India | 1 | 8 | 43 |
| Nigeria | 1 | 6 | 35 |
Twelve figures. You have 20 minutes and about 170 words. You cannot report twelve figures and also say what they mean, so something has to go.
Before writing, read the table twice and ask three questions. What is true of every row? Which row is different from the others? What happened to the distance between the top and the bottom?
Here, all four countries rose. Japan was the highest in all three years. And the gap between the highest and the lowest widened, from 29 percentage points in 2000 to 57 in 2020. That third observation is the most valuable thing in the table, and it is not written anywhere in it. You have to compute it.
Three candidates, one table
Three candidates select differently from the same data.
| What they reported | What it cost | |
|---|---|---|
| A | All twelve figures, in row order, one sentence each | No overview, no comparison, no pattern. The reader learns nothing the table did not already show |
| B | Only the highest value and the lowest value in 2020 | A true comparison, but the three dates are ignored, so the change over 20 years is missing |
| C | The shared rise, Japan's lead, the widening gap, with start and end figures for each country | Nothing. This is the selection the task asks for |
Candidate A is the common case. It feels safe because nothing is left out, and it scores poorly under Task Achievement because selecting nothing is a failure to select.
Candidate B has the opposite problem. The comparison is real, but a table with three time points is partly about change, and B never mentions change.
Candidate C reports fewer numbers than A and says more.
Candidate C's answer
The table shows the proportion of households with home internet access in four countries in 2000, 2010 and 2020. Access increased in all four countries over the period, but it remained far higher in Japan than elsewhere throughout, and the difference between the highest and lowest figures grew considerably. Japan began from a much stronger position than the other three countries, at 30 per cent in 2000, and reached 92 per cent by 2020. Brazil saw the largest increase of the four, rising from only 3 per cent to 71 per cent, which brought it closer to the Japanese figure by the end of the period. Access in India and Nigeria followed a similar pattern to each other. Both started at approximately 1 per cent in 2000 and were still below 10 per cent in 2010, before rising to 43 and 35 per cent respectively in 2020. As a result, the gap between Japan and Nigeria widened from 29 percentage points to 57.
That is 167 words and it uses seven of the twelve figures. The five it leaves out are the 2010 values for Japan and Brazil, and three figures that repeat a pattern already stated.
How to choose, in ninety seconds
Do this before you write a word.
- Find the extremes. Highest and lowest, in the final year or in the only year. These are almost always key features.
- Find what is shared. If every category moves the same way, that sentence is your overview.
- Find the exception. A category that falls while the rest rise, or rises much faster, is the second half of your overview.
- Compute one distance. The gap between top and bottom, at the start and at the end. Did it widen or narrow? This is the sentence most candidates never write.
- Group the rows. Put categories that behave alike into one paragraph. In the table above, India and Nigeria belong together, which is why one sentence covers both.
Then write figures only where they support a claim you have already made. A figure attached to a claim is evidence. A figure on its own is a transcription.
What to leave out
Leave out the axis labels, the legend and the units as separate sentences. They belong inside your introduction, not in the body.
Leave out any figure that repeats a pattern you have already described. If you have said both countries stayed below 10 per cent in 2010, you do not need both numbers.
Leave out reasons. The table does not say why Brazilian access grew, so a sentence explaining it is not supported by the data and does not earn credit.
Leave out a conclusion that repeats the overview. Task 1 needs an overview, and it does not need a conclusion as well.
Before and after
A body sentence from candidate A:
In 2000 Japan was 30 per cent, Brazil was 3 per cent, India was 1 per cent and Nigeria was 1 per cent.
The same information, selected:
Japan began from a much stronger position than the other three countries, at 30 per cent in 2000, while the remaining three all stood at 3 per cent or below.
The second version is one word shorter. It makes a claim, groups three of the four countries, and supports the claim with two figures. That is what highlighting a key feature looks like in a sentence.
What to do today
Take any chart or table you have practised with. Cover your answer and write only the overview, two sentences, no figures. Then count how many of the figures in your old answer were attached to a claim and how many were standing alone. The second number is the one to reduce.
If you want to see which of your sentences carry the selection and which are padding, paste your answer into Bandly for an estimated band on each of the four criteria and the sentences behind each estimate. Those bands are estimates from a scoring engine rather than marks from an examiner, so use them to find the sentences and then make the choice yourself.
Find out what this essay would score
Paste your own answer and Bandly returns an estimated band for each of the four criteria, with the sentences that pulled the score down. Under a cent an essay, about six seconds.
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