IELTS Writing Task 1 Map Vocabulary

hello my name's Liz and in this lesson I would like to look at some useful vocabulary to help you write about maps for IELTS writing task 1 academic paper although it is not common to get maps they do appear and you do need to prepare and learn how to describe a map so in this lesson we will look at some basic vocabulary how to use the key talking about roads and rail writing about population and I will also give you a link so that you can see a bow score 9 model map report for writing task 1 well let's start and we'll have a look at some basic vocabulary for maps when you get a map in IELTS writing task 1 you need to describe the location of things on the map now you can see we have a map here and it's a map of a town called Dartford and there are two places on the map there's a and B and you can also see we have a little symbol here and that's a symbol to tell us that directly up vertically is north so of course these are called compass points and you need to use the compass points to describe the location of a and B so here we've got the compass we've got north east south and west you can also have north east that's here or south east you can have north west and also south west so that's the vocabulary let's put that in a sentence so that we can describe the location of B and here we have a sentence to describe the location of B B is located northeast of Dartford and you can see on the map that B is located outside the town so it's located northeast of Dartford so here you can see we've got is located and many students think that that is a past tense and they change it and they put be locates please don't do that this is not a past tense it's a passive voice so that is actually in the present so B is located northeast of Dartford and of course we don't want to keep repeating is located is located we want to change the vocabulary to show the examiner a good range so you can also say B is situated north east of Dartford or B lies north east of Dartford or you can use a very simple verb and just say B is northeast of Dartford so we've got a few variations that we can use for the verb well let's move on and I want to have a look at this part of the map which is the key most maps that you will get in IELTS have a key not all of them but many and you need to look at this key because it will tell you what the information on your map shows so you need to look at that key before you start writing so you can see here that the blue area which is quite large on the map is the housing area we've got a white area in the middle here that's the town centre and running through the town is the railway line now a few things that we need to pay attention to in the key firstly you can see here that when they give the information in the key they use capital letters but when we write we need to change that to small letters so that it is grammatically correct also another thing is it's not necessary to paraphrase all the words in the key in fact some words cannot be paraphrased so don't worry too much about that it's normal but let's have a quick look at possible paraphrases the first one housing area so this large blue area that could be written as the residential area and residential area means the area where people live so that's the same town center I have many students wanting to paraphrase that and many students want to change the word town and they write city center but unfortunately that is wrong so you cannot use that a town is a town a fitty is a city a town is smaller than a city so you cannot paraphrase the word town so the only other way that we could write town center would be the center of the town so that's the only other way but really you will need to use those words it's fine and of course this symbol here is the railway it's also possible to have roads or main roads so just take a look at your map and again if you have roads please do not paraphrase them as streets roads and streets are not the same thing roads are mostly between towns and streets are inside in the city center so if it says Road in your key then please write Road when you're writing for your writing task 1 right so that is the key now let's look at some more information about maps and here we have a sentence that gives information about the railway you can see the railway here running through the railway runs through Dartford from north to south and you can see here that the railway starts in the north and runs through the town to the south and course this is all about collocations which is using the right verb with the noun so we can say the railway trun through Dartford we could say it crosses Dartford it passes through Dartford or it goes through Dartford so there are a variety of different verbs that we can use to show the information about railways and of course there might be roads on your map and luckily we can use the same verbs for roads as well so that's very useful now let's have a look at how to write about population not all maps give populations but if they do you need to include it in your IELTS writing task 1 you can see here that this is the turn of Dartford and you can see here pop that means population of 60,000 now I've got 2 different sentences for you one is the population of Dartford is 60,000 and the other this is another way to write it this is quite simple so this is more complex B is located northeast of Dartford which has a population of 60,000 so you can see here I've added it as a clause you can also say that Dartford has 60,000 inhabitants or there are 60,000 people living there so there are a number of different ways to write about population the other thing to notice is that population is singular so don't forget that now before I give you a link to see a band score 9 model map let me give you a complex sentence to describe the location of these two places using all the language that we've learnt today and here we have the sentences a is located in the town centre which has a railway running through it B is situated north of Dartford just outside the housing area so that is how you describe locations on a map for IELTS writing task 1 now let me give you a link so that you can have a look at a bow score 9 map report and also get other useful IELTS lessons for you soon you

Channel: IELTS Liz

Views: 1,589,673

Keywords: IELTS maps, IELTS writing task 1, ielts vocabulary

Id: PhVlFDNAmUQ

Length: 9min 47sec (587 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 07 2015