IELTS Writing Task 1 Introductions- Band 9 Lesson – YouTube Dictation Transcript & Vocabulary

1.I took all the IELTS Cambridge books and looked at all of the task one questions to see if there were any patterns you see if there are any common patterns we can use these to write great introductions quickly and easily so in this video I'll answer two questions are there any common questions and common patterns for task one academic and how can we use these to quickly and easily write introductions and at the end of this video I'll show you something that you should never do when using this strategy all task one questions in the academic part of the test will look like this you'll have a question statement and it will say something like graph and then it will tell you to summarize the information and then you'll have some kind of graph for example a line graph like we have here and then you will write your report based on the information that we have here and there are three parts to your writing so here we have details paragraphs this is where you will describe the details of the graph or the map or the process in more detail here you'll have an overview paragraph and if you want more information on how to write those I'll give you another free video at the end but what we're going to focus on today is very very important which is your introduction so how you write your introduction is you take the question and you paraphrase it paraphrasing just means that you write it so that it means the same thing but you use different words you will always get a line graph or a bar chart or a pie chart and they will always have data in them numbers basically or you might get a map or you might get some kind of process to write about but are there some common words and phrases that are repeated again and again and again and the good news is there are so in 100% of cases it says something like this the graph chart table map diagram whatever it is below either shows or gives information about so what we need to do here is take this and paraphrase it and the good news is we can immediately delete below because when we go to write we're not talking about information below so we've just removed one word that's one less thing that we have to think about good news so far let's first think about the type of information that we have to write about I'm going to rank these in how common they are so chart appeared in 44% of questions table 24% graph 18% diagram 11% on plan 3% so these ones make up 86% of what you will get on test day probably if it's not exactly 86% don't email me with a very angry email but it's highly likely you're going to get one of these and the good news is all you have to do is just change bar chart line graph table pie chart whatever it is to data they all mean data and then that leaves us with 14% where it might be a map it might be a diagram it might be a process but all of these we can change this to illustration an illustration is just a drawing on a piece of paper that's what you can change it to when you're writing so let's look at some real examples the two Pi charts show how the population changed we can change change this to the data the maps below show high an industrial area the illustration so that leaves us with shows and gives information about so shows you could put presents or you could put demonstrates or you could put displays any of these words are appropriate and they are accurate what I would recommend doing is just learn one or two and then move on gives information about you can use the exact same words keep it simple so we could put here presents and we could put here displays after this we normally get something like the percentage of sorry if that's not clear the number of the change or the increase or the decrease so again this is extremely simple we just learn appropriate and accurate ways to express this so that it means the same thing but we're using different words so for example this this one the data presents the amount of the thing that normally comes next are subjects this could be people could be countries households or houses or families things like that and there are many different possibilities here and you should always keep an open mind about what might come up but these were by far the three most common so let's look at these in a little bit more detail so we could talk about maybe citizens here or residents if we're talking about it within the context of people living somewhere or individuals but remember if you get a question about people you're probably going to have to use the word or a synonym of the word people not just in your introduction but multiple times throughout your report so a way of doing that is to think about the context that we're discussing so let's say it is people who visited Barbados what could we call these people what we could call them to TS or we could call them visitors or because the people in Barbados are very very friendly and hospitable we could call them guests so don't just think generally how do I change people think specifically what are these people and then next we have countries or regions and these two will often be connected so it will be people visiting this country or more likely people living in this country or people from this country so let's stick with Barb Barbados people from Barbados they're not barbadians they are beans not many people know that from outside of Barbados but you could also say people from Barbados or we could say beijan citizens or residents of Barbados or beian residents there's a lot of things you can do here but I would familiarize yourself with the big big countries that often come up the big English-speaking countries Australia Australian America Americans United Kingdom British but one thing to remember is there's only a certain number of ways that you can say a country Barbados is Barbados well if you're from there you might say Bim but that's a informal way of saying it but there's not many ways that you as someone from India or Pakistan or China or Vietnam you probably will only know Barbados is Barbados so don't be afraid to repeat the word it is much better to repeat the word then change it to something that is inaccurate you're not going to lose scores automatically for repeating a country name for example next we have households and families and these can be used interchangeably but you could also here have homes or residences and then there are a number of different words that you might get and I just want to show you quickly how you can not only use synonyms but change the form of the word so for example let's say it is about the number of workers so a synonym of that is employees but what you can do is take the word and then change the form of the word so for example we change workers to work how could we say that people who work or a different form of that word is working we could change that to working people or we could take employees those in employment or even those employed cuz a lot of students just think synonyms synonyms synonym synonyms but you can take the word change the form or change it to a synonym and then change the form of that synonym there's lots of possibilities there not only for your introduction but also your overview and your details paragraphs so let's change this one so the data we can delete below displays the am mind of individuals they're living so let's say they're residents so residing in rural areas Countryside and then there will often be something like this a Time reference these come up again and again because you will often be shown change over time so a line graph for example the purpose of a line graph is to show changes over time and these actually come up in more than 50% of questions let's simplify this question a little bit just for demonstration purposes out of these time references 19% are specific years so it might say something like in 1990 table below shows the number of people living in rural areas in 1990 specific years I would just repeat this there's no way of saying in 1990 differently and then 133% said between X and Y so for example between 1990 and 2004 and then % said from X to Y for example from 1990 to 2004 and all you do is just switch these so if it says between X and Y you change it to from X to Y and if it says from X to Y you change it to between X and Y so between 1990 and 2004 becomes from 1990 to 2004 and from 1990 to 2004 becomes between 1990 and 2004 so we would change this up here from 1990 to 2004 and that is as much predicting as we can do but you might be looking at this and thinking oh but it says in four different countries how do we anticipate that how do we predict that well that brings me on to the four essential tips and the thing that you should never do so tip number one paraphrase but do not over complicate everything what we see is that students struggle with paraphrasing not because paraphrasing is difficult I've just shown you how easy it is it is because they try to change every single word and they try and change it to something very very complicated just keep it simple tip number two is read and understand the question don't go through each word like a robot how do I change the how do I change table how do I change below how do I change give that is how a robot would read this you need to First calm down don't think about paraphrasing understand the question read and think about the question and think about what it means overall this will mean that you can write a paraphrase that is accurate and appropriate tip number three one sentence is normally enough sometimes it will be two but in more than 90% of the questions that we analyzed it was just one simple sentence what a lot of students do is they learn extra sent sentences and put them in to their introduction it is not a memorization test and in fact if you insert things that are not there that will actually reduce your score you're expected just to look at the data and Report exactly what it says tip number four but probably the most important one perfect practice makes perfect you cannot look at this video and immediately write grade introductions go and get a variety of different questions practice the techniques that I've taught you here here but only do that if you are getting feedback from a real expert that's what perfect practice is last two very important things that you should never do number one you shouldn't think that task one or any part of the IELTS test is a memorization test memorization is not what they are testing they are testing your ability to communicate clearly in English so you need to be aware of all of the things that I taught you today but you need to expect different things within the question so if you just wrote this it would be wrong because you weren't expecting in four different countries so if you just act like a robot and memorize things and you're not anticipating random things that might be in there then you're going to be wrong so we would have to finish this off by writing in four distinct Nations and that brings me on to the second thing that you should never do which is watch one video and think one video is going to guarantee a high score remember at the beginning of the lesson I showed you this your introduction is just a small part of your overall task one report you need to learn how to write an overview and details paragraphs but don't worry what I've done is I've created this video for you which is going to help you out with that