IELTS Task 1 Exercises: Practise One Skill at a Time

Writing another full Task 1 answer is not an exercise. It is a test. You practise every skill at once, you get one number back, and you still do not know whether the problem was your overview, your data choice or your grammar.

Exercises are different. They isolate one skill, take five minutes, and tell you immediately whether you can do it. This page breaks Task 1 into four skills and gives you a drill for each, with a model answer you can check against.

Task 1 Academic gives you a chart, table, map or process and asks you to describe it in at least 150 words in about 20 minutes. General Training gives you a letter instead, so the drills below on data selection and comparison language apply to the Academic paper.

Skill 1: writing the overview

The overview is the single highest value sentence in a Task 1 answer. It states the main pattern without any numbers. Task Achievement, the first criterion, explicitly expects a clear overview of the main trends or features.

Most candidates either skip it or fill it with figures, which turns it into another body paragraph.

Exercise 1A. For each description below, write one sentence that states the overall pattern. Use no numbers at all. Limit: 25 words.

1. A line graph shows coffee, tea and cocoa consumption in the UK from 1990 to 2020. Tea starts highest and falls steadily. Coffee starts low and rises past tea in 2008. Cocoa is flat and lowest throughout.
2. A bar chart shows recycling rates in five countries. Germany and Austria are far above the rest. The other three are close together and much lower.
3. A table shows average house prices in six cities across three years. Every city rises. The two coastal cities rise fastest.

Model answers.

1. Over the period, coffee replaced tea as the most popular of the three drinks, while cocoa consumption remained both low and stable.
2. Germany and Austria recycled a considerably higher proportion of their waste than the other three countries, which were broadly similar to each other.
3. House prices increased in all six cities across the period, with the sharpest growth occurring in the two coastal locations.

What to check in your own sentences. Does it contain a number? Remove it. Does it name a single data point rather than a pattern? Rewrite it. Could a reader who never saw the chart understand the main story? If not, it is not an overview.

Skill 2: selecting what to report

A chart with forty data points does not want forty sentences. Task Achievement rewards selecting the key features, and a candidate who lists everything scores lower than one who chooses well, because listing shows no judgement.

The selection rule: report the extremes, the crossing points and the exceptions. Ignore everything that simply repeats the pattern you have already stated.

Exercise 2A. Below are eight observations about one line graph. Mark four to include and four to leave out.

• Sales began at 20 units in January.
• Sales rose to 25 units in February.
• Sales rose to 31 units in March.
• Sales peaked at 96 units in July.
• Sales fell slightly in August.
• Sales fell to 22 units by December.
• The July peak was almost five times the January figure.
• Sales in April were 38 units.

Model selection. Include the January starting figure, the July peak, the December end figure and the comparison between peak and start. Leave out February, March, April and the slight August fall, because they are steps within a trend you have already described.

The four included points tell the whole story. The four excluded ones add length without adding information, and length without information is what makes an answer read as a list.

Skill 3: comparison and change language

Task 1 answers fail on repetition more than on grammar. The same candidate writes increased six times because that is the only verb available under time pressure.

Build the alternatives now so they are automatic later.

Exercise 3A. Rewrite each sentence using a noun phrase instead of a verb, keeping the meaning.

1. Car ownership increased sharply between 2000 and 2010.
2. The number of visitors fell slightly in winter.
3. Energy use remained stable across the whole period.

Model answers.

1. There was a sharp increase in car ownership between 2000 and 2010.
2. Winter saw a slight fall in the number of visitors.
3. Energy use showed little change across the whole period.

Being able to express the same movement as either a verb or a noun is what lets you vary fourteen sentences without repeating yourself, and it feeds Grammatical Range at the same time.

Exercise 3B. Write one sentence comparing each pair, using a different structure each time.

1. Brazil 45 percent, Chile 22 percent.
2. Men 3.2 hours, women 3.4 hours.
3. 1995 figure 400, 2015 figure 1,600.

Model answers.

1. The proportion in Brazil was roughly double that in Chile.
2. Women spent marginally more time on the activity than men, at 3.4 hours against 3.2.
3. The figure quadrupled over the twenty year period, rising from 400 to 1,600.

Note the third one. Quadrupled is precise, and multiples are the most efficient way to compare distant figures.

Skill 4: tense and accuracy

Task 1 tense is decided by the chart, not by preference. A chart with past dates takes past tense throughout. A chart labelled with future projections takes is expected to or is projected to. A process diagram with no dates takes the present simple, usually passive: the beans are roasted, then they are ground.

Exercise 4A. Correct one error in each sentence.

1. The graph show three categories of spending.
2. In 2010, the figure rises to 60 percent.
3. The number of the students increased steadily.
4. Sales was higher in the second quarter.
5. There was a increase of 12 percent.

Model answers. 1. The graph shows, subject verb agreement. 2. the figure rose, past tense for a past date. 3. The number of students, no article before a general plural. 4. Sales were, plural subject. 5. an increase, article before a vowel sound.

These five error types account for a large share of the grammar slips in real Task 1 answers, and all five are visible on a careful reread.

How to use these drills

Do one skill per session, not all four. A drill takes five to ten minutes, which means you can do one on a phone during a commute.

A workable order:

1. Week 1: overview sentences, ten charts, one sentence each.
2. Week 2: selection, take five charts and list only the four points you would report.
3. Week 3: comparison language, rewrite twenty sentences between verb and noun forms.
4. Week 4: tense and accuracy, correct your own old answers.

Then write one full answer and see whether the four skills hold together under time pressure. That answer is the test; the drills are the practice.

If you want to know which of the four criteria your full answer actually lost marks on, paste it into Bandly with the chart and read the per criterion breakdown before you decide what to drill next.