You are given a visual and asked to report it. The skill being tested is selection — there is far more in the chart than fits in 150 words, and the marks go to choosing what matters rather than to covering everything.
Your opinion. Why the trend happened. What will happen next. Whether it is a good thing. All four are common, all four earn nothing, and all four consume words you need for the features that are scored.
Paraphrase the title of the visual. Change the wording, not the meaning, and do not copy the prompt sentence — copied text is discounted from your word count and reads as having nothing of your own.
The most important paragraph in the task. Say what someone would notice from across the room: the overall direction, the biggest gap, which category dominates throughout. Keep figures out of it; they belong in the body, and the descriptors ask for main features rather than data here.
The largest, fastest-moving or otherwise dominant part of the data, with supporting figures. Two or three well-chosen numbers, not every value on the axis.
Whatever contrasts with body 1, grouped by how it behaves rather than taken in the order it appears. Grouping is what Task Achievement rewards; going row by row is what it penalises.
The structure above holds for all three, but what counts as a main feature differs — and a process diagram breaks the comparative language the other two run on entirely.
Selection. There is far more in the visual than you can report in 150 words, and Task Achievement is scored on whether you picked the significant features — the largest, the smallest, the biggest change, the crossover — rather than on how much you listed.
Language it invitesComparatives and trend verbs: rose sharply, fell steadily, levelled off, more than doubled, roughly three times as many. Pair a verb with an adverb rather than reaching for rare vocabulary.
Grouping. A table gives you raw numbers with no shape, and the work is imposing one — by highest and lowest, by which rows move together, by which one behaves unlike the rest. Reading a table row by row is the commonest way to fail Task Achievement on it.
Language it invitesSuperlatives and proportions: the highest figure, by a considerable margin, accounted for just under a third, whereas.
Sequence, and no numbers at all. There is nothing to compare, so the comparative language that carries the other two is useless here. The overview says how many stages there are and what the process begins and ends with.
Language it invitesSequencers and the passive: is then transferred to, once this has been completed, at the final stage. The passive is genuinely appropriate here — the agent is usually irrelevant.
Yes, and it is the highest-value sentence in the task. The band descriptors refer to a clear overview of main trends explicitly, and a response without one is capped on Task Achievement no matter how accurate the detail is. Write it as a separate paragraph so it cannot be missed.
No. Task 1 asks you to report what is shown. Explaining why the trend happened, predicting what happens next, or saying whether it is good or bad are all outside the task and earn nothing while using words you need elsewhere.
At least 150, which is a floor and not a target. Around 160 to 190 is comfortable in 20 minutes. Going substantially over usually means describing every data point, which is the opposite of what Task Achievement rewards.
No — selection is the skill being tested. Report the significant features: highest, lowest, largest change, any crossover or reversal, and enough figures to support them. A response that lists everything demonstrates no selection at all.
Match the visual. Dates in the past take past tenses; a process diagram with no dates takes the present simple, usually passive. If the chart spans past and future projections, change tense at the boundary and make that visible.
Our IELTS mock serves charts, tables and process diagrams from the same bank the real test draws its formats from, and marks against all four criteria. The first session is free.
This guide is written from the IELTS test format published by British Council, IDP and Cambridge, in our own words. For the official wording, see the official IELTS sample questions. MockLive AI is an independent practice tool and is not affiliated with the British Council, IDP or Cambridge Assessment English.