IELTS Live - Task 1 Writing - Band 9 Bar Chart

good morning students and welcome to today's live isles class my name is adrian and i'm streaming to you from beautiful victoria here on the west coast of canada i hope everybody has had a fantastic week and is looking forward to a great weekend staying healthy staying strong staying productive hello ali welcome members this is a members chat class everybody is welcome to watch in this class we are looking at an ielts task one writing for the academic version of the ielts exam and we are going to write a band 9 bar chart example for those of you learning for the general ielts exam task 1 is very different it's a letter it's an email that you have to write and for that you should check out our general ielts youtube channel called general english help and this lesson is presented to you by aehelp.com for academic ielts success definitely visit us there and for general ielts visit us at g ieltshelp.com that's general ieltshelp.com on both of those websites we have loads and loads of examples and materials to help you get high band scores we even have professional editing and proofreading services for your writing so use those the websites look like this this is the general version uh with the green background you can click that big red button to join our premium package our academic one looks like this with the blue background again click that big red button it's a one-time payment for lifetime access and we are an official british council ielts test registration center and certified agents welcome abhishek good to see you hi june nice to see more members uh joining in on this class okay everyone so uh if you have some questions please send me an email to adrian aehelp.com questions about our apps or our websites or ielts about english um and uh we do have the listening part three and part four class coming up after this one continuation from yesterday's listening part one and two that will be an all chat class everybody will be able to join and then we'll have a couple more classes for you tomorrow speaking part two for members speaking part three for everyone so lots more uh learning to be had this week all right everyone let's get into our uh task one bar chart example for the day okay so uh you get to your um writing section of your ielts exam you finished the listening you finished the reading so you're two hours into the sit-down portion of your ielts exam and you're staying focused you take a big deep breath before you start your writing section always start with task 1 writing i highly recommend that because all the information for your essay is in front of you you just have to put it together for task two you actually have to plan and think about your writing so it's good to um already have a little bit of writing uh to warm you up from task one before you do that okay so you can start with task two it's allowed but i recommend starting with task one okay task one is an expository essay meaning you have to explain expose the concept interpret the concept of the task one question for the academic ielts general ielts is a narrative essay or narrative writing and the first step is just to really read the question very carefully so in the reading section your reading might have gotten quite quick by the end of it especially if you're rushing to finish all of the passages and the questions so when you get to the writing section and you're reading the question just remember to slow down okay slow down read the question carefully all right okay um so here we go uh let's uh let's look at this task one writing question let's read this carefully okay ielts task one writing you should spend about 20 minutes on this task and that's how much you should spend 20 minutes okay the following chart shows the number of units sold in a particular month for several types of stationary supplies by an office supply shop chain in the usa at six different locations uh report the main features and make comparisons where relevant write at least 150 words okay so it's just some month it's the units sold so it's number of sales and it's for some different kinds of stationery supplies and it's in some sort of an office supply store chain that's in the us at different locations okay sounds like a fairly complex bar graph it could be no worries you stay calm and focused and go step by step so let's take a look at the bar chart for today um okay nice and fancy so here we go um the title of the chart most common items sold by store location okay and then here in the legend we have the name of the items let's zoom in on that and let's see what kind of items these stationery shops are reporting their sales for so here we go pedro good luck on your outs exam today i see that you're saying it's today so good luck on that okay so here are the items names um we have printer paper we have laptops we have pens envelopes binders notepads and backpacks okay so we have seven different items that are used by office workers and by students i would assume for the most part okay good so everything from printer papers to envelopes to backpacks and laptops okay now let's take a look at the axes information so we've got our y uh axis here let me go a little bit more over there we go so we've got our unit of sale uh from zero to twenty two hundred oh two thousand two hundred units sold um in a particular month okay and it goes zero two hundred four hundred um so what do we call that when it goes zero 200 400 600 800 um what's the uh interpretation of that so how do we explain this when it goes 0 200 400 600 it's a good piece of vocabulary to know and i think some of our members probably know this so how is the y-axis represented in this bar chart okay bar charts of course have a y-axis they have an x-axis and they show nominal data so name data that's on the x-axis and they have yeah that's right honey very good honey says that is interval data so yeah this is interval data on the uh x-axis okay um so when you're dealing with bar charts keep in mind this is uh just a note for everybody okay so when you're dealing with bar charts it's important to know that you're comparing the correlation between nominal and interval data okay when you're writing an expository essay discussing a bar chart you are interpreting the correlation between the uh interval data usually shown on the x axis and the nominal data shown on the y axis okay so nominal data you can kind of think about it as name data we don't say name we do say nominal but you can think about it as name data and interval data means equal number between measures okay so what i mean by that is in our example your y-axis is your interval data it goes from zero to 2200 with intervals of 200 and your x-axis is your nominal data it's your name data okay and in this case uh we have the names of the cities uh with these shops okay so we have austin we have denver we have london new york san diego and seattle okay so those are the different uh cities here in the u.s that we're talking about by the way there is london in the u.s as well as in canada although of course most people are familiar with the famous capital city of london in england you do have la and i bet you australia might even have a place called london as well okay all right so uh we have a good look at our bar graph we've read the question um what's my next step members so this is a little bit of a quick question here for you so once i've read the question i've looked at the title the axes the legend in the bar chart what do i do next what's my next step and really um task one in the academic aisles to get a band nine it's a step-by-step process you have to know some vocabulary you have to know how to write about line graphs bar graphs maps and diagrams and then it's just really a step-by-step recipe-like process where you have to put it all together pedro says you have to paraphrase yes a little bit of paraphrasing for sure um paraphrasing and what else so your next step here is write the overview okay so step one is read the question and look at the graph carefully okay step two is write the overview by paraphrasing the question and yeah nick hill says add some details okay um abhishek we're not looking at the significant feature in the graph yet uh we're going to do that after in step three okay so write the overview by paraphrasing the question and adding uh details using the graph okay all right so we can do that now all right let's write the overview okay so i'm going to write uh the paraphrase here i see it's a little bit i'm a little bit off uh key here that's okay just give me one second okay there we go get you perfectly into the screen so that it's looking good yeah um the overview is the introduction june that's right ielts has a kind of a strange uh description of what the introduction actually is june and university they will just call the uh introduction both the overview as the uh paraphrasing in this case and the main feature together but ielts likes to kind of see this separately so um the overview you can think about it this way is made up of the introduction plus the main feature now that's really the overview um ielts likes to see this in two paragraphs university professors like to see this in one paragraph because it makes sense to have it in one paragraph but uh whatever let's stick with what ielts likes to do because we're doing the ielts exam uh so let's uh let's look at this part here and then paraphrase it so add some details like instead of saying the following chart you should write this bar chart instead of saying shows you could write depicts or illustrates okay so using your own words all right i'll do a little bit of this you do a bit of this and then we'll compare okay so uh we've got uh how many stationary we've got one two three four five six seven different uh stationary items okay ranging from printer paper to laptops to binders and backpacks i don't know if i would list all seven here okay uh you can use the word ranging in this case ugh all right so there is my uh paraphrase introduction uh using the question using the graph to give a bit more details uh for this um for this uh bar chart okay so ali uh says uh these bars depict the number of sales for seven distinct stationary items in a given month from zero to 2200 units with intervals of 200 by the office supply stores in six different cities within the usa ali that is some beautiful paraphrasing with nice detail okay that's exactly what the ielts examiners want to see um make sure your comma does not have a space before it okay so your comma should be right after uh 200 there so you have a fairly clean introduction there ali that would be categorized as a band eight okay a band aid to band nine just careful with that comma okay nick hill says the bar graph illustrates the information about the quantity of sales from zero to 2200 with the interval of 200 simpler nikhil with intervals or with an interval of 200 in a specific month for seven different stationary items by an office supply chain in six major cities within the usa very nice nick hill that's some nice writing as well okay this is my paraphrase here this bar chart depicts the number of units sold from zero to 2200 in a given month for seven different stationery supplies ranging from backpacks to printer paper and laptops by an office supply store chain in six different major cities across america okay because they are major cities okay yeah ali absolutely both you and nick hill have at least a band um eight uh level introduction so far so that's very very good okay and then after that comes the main feature so again in the ielts they like to see these two paragraphs separately in university college you'll find the professors uh prefer to see these together it makes sense it's the whole thing is kind of the overview introduction all in one and then you want to write the main feature okay all right and i see that we have uh akshay as well writing the introduction which is good so akshay june if you have something similar to what you just saw then you're on the right track okay so now we want to write the main feature uh what should you do when you're thinking about the main feature what should you be thinking about what should you be looking at members okay this is i'm putting this question out there for you today okay you should know this from previous classes if you've uh taken some task one classes with me before so when you think about main feature what's your first kind of approach or what's your first step okay ali says not highest and lowest uk chase is highest and lowest yeah ali not highest and lowest nick hill not necessarily major and minor sales okay that's not necessarily true okay so thinking about highest lowest it it's okay it's not the end of the world but that shouldn't always be your go-to okay uh in the ielts both in the speaking and in the writing highest band scores are awarded to students who have original content okay okay so june says look at the main patterns and the trends and in order to do that what should you do what should you do in order to do that okay this is again a very important strategy so let me uh let me give you a little bit of info on this okay so step three uh write the main feature in order to do this look at the graphs visually okay what are the most observable visual patterns and trends okay so this is not necessarily lowest and highest okay if you do lowest and highest you can get a band 6 maybe a band 6.5 if you have some really good writing perhaps a band 7 if we're really stretching it but in order to get into those higher band scores because again remember academic is also testing your thinking it's not just testing your english you have to go above and beyond just simply looking for highest and lowest so uh what do we what do we notice when we visually uh look at uh these uh bars what are um [Music] what are kind of the main visual patterns that we can recognize right away okay so visually okay don't just think highest and lowest but visually think about what you notice that's obvious okay that that kind of jumps out at you it's like whoa look at that okay so yeah we see highest and lowest but we also see some other interesting points here as well okay very good so akshay says that um all of the cities seem to have a similar pattern so all of these cities have these long green bars they tend to have similar kind of sales here for these three colors and then again somewhat similar sales for these three colors and all three of the cities tend to have that same pattern right very good akshay so all of the cities seem to have the same pattern but okay but what okay yeah devon says but just varying in the amount so we can see that denver has the greatest total sales and san diego seems to have the lowest total sales but the pattern uh meaning the amount for each item seems to be quite similar relative for each city okay so that's the really interesting uh overview or main feature in this case okay so write that use your words and express that as clearly as possible okay i'm going to do the same so let's do this okay the main feature all right so there is what i have um let's see what you come up with okay so what i have is at first observation that's a leading expression so let's put a comma after that it seems that the relative number of sales this is a nice word to remember here for um describing graphs okay it can be used for pie charts as well so relative number of sales for each type of stationary item shows a similar pattern for all six cities but the total number of sales are significantly different denver having the most sales overall and san diego having the least okay let's see what you've come up with so ali says at first glance it is apparent that all of these six cities have similar patterns in the number of stationary units sold for each item but the total number of sales is quite different okay ali very close there's a couple of just small pieces missing there that i would put in to make it even more accurate okay so in number of stationary units sold for each item okay because the items are different but for each of them they're similar among these six cities okay but the total number of sales differ significantly or quite a bit okay all right um so emphasize that big difference okay nick hill says overall it is evident that the number of sales for each common item shows a similar pattern among the cities however denver um has the most overall sales and san diego has the lowest very good nick hill okay that's a good job there all right uh june says immediately it is noticeable that each cities follow a similar pattern in terms of stationary items sold though there are significant differences with total numbers sold to customers okay that works june uh careful with your word repetition like sold sold try to avoid that okay if you have to rephrase but it's good june that would be a solid seven to eight as well okay very nice all right so i have my main feature along with my introduction now i'm ready for my analyses and when i'm thinking about my analyses as long as i've done a good job with my introduction and my main feature my analyses shouldn't be too bad here okay because my main feature is also kind of like my thesis okay so this is equatable uh to your thesis statement okay so what that means is that if i've done a good job with my overview i'm really now when i go in to my analyses i'm going to go into more detail with each of my points so at first observation it seems that the relative number of sales for each type of stationary items shows a similar pattern for all six cities so that means that my first part of my analyses will be discussing this similar pattern for all six cities okay and then here i write but the total number of sales are significantly different denver having the most sales overall and san diego having the least okay so there will be the second part of my analyses going into more detail is that clear okay so akshay devanch hans is that clear what i'm saying there about the analyses while you think about that um let me just read some more of those overviews so damon says at first glance it is observable that all stationary materials uh sold follow similar patterns in the six different cities comma but variations in the number in the total numbers are different okay davange don't start a sentence with but you should be joining that sentence with but uh hans says in general it can be seen that each city has similar patterns for each items sold passive voice however the total number of sales are significantly different good huns just remember your passive voice can i see those affirmations the yes and yes sirs that's good alright so now we want to go into these details okay all right um so we're saying that the pattern is the same so now we want to talk about the pattern a little bit more okay so the pattern here uh we can talk about uh first of all is the notepad so this is an this is representing notepad okay and notepads had the highest sales for every single store okay proportionally all right um so that's the pattern that's the description of the pattern so notepads is number one okay and then um the orange here is pens the red is back or sorry envelopes okay so pens envelopes and this light blue one here is the binder all right okay so when you have a bar chart like this there is no way that you have enough time in your ielts exam to specifically write about each store having each of these sales so you have to group your ideas together okay you have to create clear ideas but you have to group them together okay so um here we want to write about notepad first we want to write about envelopes pens and binders second and then clearly we're going to write about the printer paper the laptops and the backpacks uh third okay all right um so we're roughly looking at proportions here um so what can we say if we look at these proportions here let's look at this first one uh what can we say about the proportion of sales for each of these items so if we compare printer paper laptops and backpacks to pens envelopes and binders what can we say roughly how many more pen envelopes and binders were sold compared to paper laptop and backpacks okay ken phum no worries this lesson will be available to you on the channel so you can check it out later okay all right so what can we what can we say about the comparison of sales of printer paper laptops backpack compared to pens envelopes and binders um yeah so helene ali says about twice as many so about twice as many uh pens envelopes and binders were sold in each city as uh printer paper laptops backpacks roughly speaking yeah that's accurate and um how many note pads were sold okay yeah and davange has about three times as many units of note pads as all of these okay um good so we can go about this in a few different ways i would definitely um discuss notepads first it's the most significant it had the highest sales so we can start from there okay so let's start with number one uh let's start with notepads now some of you might say hey i want to combine this with the city so actually giving some numbers here so close to 2 200 units in denver and about so and so for san diego okay i'm going to leave that for a little bit later so i'm just going to talk about the proportions okay first all right okay so everybody's got the right idea all right let's do this so let's write uh a little bit and uh make these comparisons okay okay i'm going to write you right and then we'll compare i got to get moving here so that we can develop this essay so i'm going to start writing these first three points and then we'll talk about the other points of comparing the cities here afterwards okay all right remember i have to fit my introduction my main feature and the next part which is the analyses into of about 200 to 220 words 150 words is the absolute minimum for band-aid band 9 essays and i've talked to a lot of examiners over the years they always say yeah it's very difficult to get a band 9 if not impossible with just 150 words band 8 band 9 essays are usually more like 200 220 words especially for a bar graph like this i just don't think that you can actually include all of the relevant and important information in just 150 words okay ali don't panic all right so now comes the analyses okay again those were pens envelopes and binders and the last three were laptops printer paper and backpacks okay now i'm gonna just read over that make sure it makes sense and i haven't made any big mistakes now this is quite concise and that's always your goal but if it takes you one or two extra sentences to express these ideas clearly that is absolutely okay so at deeper inspection notepads were the most sold item at each location with numbers at roughly 50 more than the second most popular supplies which were pens envelopes and binders these latter three items latter three items means that i'm referring to these three items so these latter three items had about twice the number of sales as the remaining three kinds of merchandise don't forget words like merchandise and goods okay laptop printer paper and backpack okay now i can get to um the specifics here uh by looking at the stores okay so keep writing here members and i'm gonna look up at the chat and give you some feedback intermittently okay like uh hans says in detail notepad is the most sold item in all these seven cities with almost twice more than the second most populars which were pens envelopes and binders yeah i think it's about 50 percent more than than those okay so careful with your accuracy of the information so it's roughly 50 percent for each of those if you look carefully okay all right um so now i'm going to go city by city so i'm going to start with denver i mentioned that in my overview so um okay so denver sold about 2200 1400 units of envelopes pens and binders and so this is where i get into uh specifics okay um and about 700 units of backpacks laptops and printer paper okay all right so that's the most now um when i describe the other cities okay so uh the next city here is seattle so seattle had the second most sales now i'm not going to write about the sales for each one instead of doing that what would be a smart way to quickly describe that seattle was second and then the number of sales without talking about each sale specifically what would be a good idea to do there okay so tell me that and i'm going to read a couple more of what students have written there okay so um june writes looking at the data in detail notepads were the most sold in all the six cities with numbers almost 50 percent more than those of pens envelopes and binders which came as the second most popular item good june and then the third uh kind of grouping would be next right so ali says gross total yeah um so thinking about the total for sure ali it's it's definitely what we want to do when we're comparing seattle and denver we already know that the pattern is the same because we've discussed that so we don't have to talk about each specific number like uh 1600 right okay so gross total or we could calculate something here as well we could calculate a roughly a percent difference or a fractional difference between uh these numbers okay so let's say that we have about uh 2150 here right and for seattle we have about it's about 1600 here roughly let's say so what is the percent difference here um between the total number of sales okay roughly again you don't have to have exact figures here we're not holding a conference for this uh supply store chain but roughly okay what is it yeah so it's roughly roughly two-thirds ali i agree with you okay um 14 i don't think is accurate pedro um so the difference between these two i think it's more than 14 okay abhishek says it's roughly about 25 uh yeah i would say 25 is closer okay so 25 uh difference in the total number of sales okay roughly it doesn't have to be exact okay so so i can continue with that okay and then i can keep going that way all right um so seattle had the second most sales with about 25 less total than denver and then uh that was followed by london austin new york and finally san diego which was less than a quarter sales of denver and i'm done okay so that's all i'm going to do i have to make sure i have 40 minutes left to do task 2. i don't need to write about each of these cities in great detail okay what's most important is that i get the key pieces of information uh like the most observable features and comparisons okay that's why task one questions always say discuss the main features and make comparisons where relevant it doesn't make sense to compare san diego to new york it's not relevant overall okay so as an example here i would then write um okay now you can write roughly or you can also use the word approximately so seattle had the second highest sales total which were approximately 25 percent less than that of denver okay all right let's take a look at the other cities so this was followed by london then austin then new york and finally san diego austin texas of course i'm guessing so london austin new york and finally san diego okay and san diego and san diego compared to denver had only about well we can take a look here and make a quick calculation if i've got a bit of time so again uh for denver uh we can just look at this green bar that'll give us a good idea for notepads um it was 2150 and for [Music] san diego it was about 400 so 20 percent okay so it was just 20 of the sales of uh denver all right so now i'm definitely getting into that 200 220 word count for this bar graph all right members do you see how i kind of logically went through step by step for what is most important and what is least important and uh especially looking at patterns rather than looking at just most and least does that make sense so do you see how that worked june you write five times so five times fewer sales you could write as well for san diego compared to denver absolutely so there are different ways to express these ideas okay what i wrote here in this essay is the structure is important it's not the exact words that i'm using you could write the same essay using very different words okay all right nick hill says yes i got it which is good okay all right so i'm going to read this essay now i might include a summary if i'm really pushing for that band 9. um i'm going to read this from the top make sure it makes sense so this bar chart depicts the number of units sold from zero to 2200 in a given month for seven different stationary supplies ranging from backpacks to printer paper and laptops by an office supply store chain in six different major cities across america at first observation it seems that the relative number of sales for each type of stationary item shows a similar pattern for all six cities but the total number of sales are significantly different denver having the most sales overall and san diego having the least at deeper inspection notepads were the most sold item at each location with numbers at roughly 50 percent more than the second most popular supplies which were pens envelopes and binders these latter three items had about twice the number of sales as the remaining three kinds of merchandise laptop printer paper and backpack as a specific explanation for this denver which had the most sales sold almost 22 hundred units of notepads 1400 units of envelopes pens and binders and about 700 units of backpacks laptops and printer paper seattle had the second highest sale total which were approximately 25 less now here just a quick plural because it's sales total oh sales total sorry it's correct so sales uh total which were approximately 25 percent less than that of denver the rank order of cities in total number of sales followed as london austin new york and san diego san diego compared to denver had only about 20 percent total sales okay uh in summary the popularity of each type of goods sold at these stores are relatively comparable while the popularity of a specific store in a given city is significantly different from the others okay so that's what we can summarize by this right that the items themselves have relatively the same kind of popularity this office supply store chain must have some really great notepads because they're really popular regardless of where the store is but the store's popularity itself is different uh given the different locations okay so that's the summary here right in summary the popularity of each type of goods sold at these stores are relatively comparable while the popularity of a specific store in a given location or city is significantly different from the others this is what you need to write and hans andreanta says okay i got it all right so that's what you want to practice okay use your logic that's all the time i have for this band 9 bar graph example i am very pleased members with these sentences that you're coming up with that's fantastic june writes to sum up notepads were the most popular stationaries in all six american cities while printer paper laptops backpacks are the least popularity that's a good summary as well june okay um yeah huns if you have time if you have a minute and you can come up with a sensible summary it's not your own opinion okay it's something that you can see clearly in the graph then yes because a band 9 caliber expository essay will always include some form of summary okay all right okay students wonderful job um akshay you're making me blush here at the end of the class uh i'm going to be back in about 30 minutes with um listening part three and four practice for a band nine that's a continuation from yesterday's class and everybody will be able to join up so uh please hang around i'm adrian i'm signing out for now but i will be back in half an hour great work members see you soon bye you

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Keywords: IELTS writing task 1, diagram, pie chart, line graph, bar chart, flow-chart, IELTS descriptions, International English Language Testing System, English examination, writing for graphs, writing for charts, writing for tables, IELTS task 1, Lesson, Teacher, Learn, Student, Lessons, Learning, Free, Intro, Tutorial, IELTS task 1 explain, IELTS task 1 learning, IELTS task 1 descriptions

Id: ZfqhZPy8HhI

Length: 59min 21sec (3561 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 23 2021