How to Write Introduction for Writing Task 1

We have all appeared for examinations during our school and college days, and most of our examinations were written so writing an answer is not something that is alien to us. However, the challenge in the IELTS is using the correct vocabulary along with structuring your answer well.

The introduction is where your structuring starts and it is also the part you will begin using your vocabulary.

How to structure your introduction?

The introduction should begin by talking about what the graph/bar/table talks about. Ideally, you need to begin with one or two sentences that state what the IELTS writing task 1 shows.You can do this by paraphrasing the title of the graph and by making sure you put in a time frame if there is one.

The question says:

The line graph below shows changes in the amount and type of fast food consumed by Australian teenagers from 1975 to 2000.

And you can paraphrase the question by saying:

The line graph given here compares the fast food consumption for a period of 25 years between 1975 and 2000, of teenagers in Australia

In this way, you have managed to say the same thing as the title, but in a different way.

The sentence following this can be a small overview stating what the main trend(s) in the graph are. You don’t have to provide in depth details as this statement will only cover description of what is happening overall

For example, continuing with the same graph used above, the second statement in your answer could be:

Overall, the consumption of fish and chips declined over the period, whereas the amount of pizza and hamburgers that were eaten increased.

This covers the main changes that took place over the whole period.

If you noticed, the example here used words and phrases like “the graph given here” and “declined”, “increased” and so on. The usage of such words in the introduction is as important as structuring the introduction correctly is.

So, let us now learn such words too!

What kind of vocabulary to use in the introduction?

Introductory phrases:

The graph/table shows/indicates/illustrates/reveals/represents…
It is clear from the graph/table…
It can be seen from the graph/table…
As the graph/table shows,…
As can be seen from the graph/table,…
As is shown by the graph/table,…
As is illustrated by the graph/table,…
From the graph/table it is clear….

Vocabulary (words) that can be used in the introduction paragraph:

Decline
Increase
Upward
Downward

A word of Caution

1. Avoid using phrases like “We can see from the graph…”

2. The phrase according to generally means that the information has come from another person or source, therefore avoid using phrases like “according to the graph….”

Hence, both the structuring and the kind of vocabulary used in the introduction are important because these will pave the way for the rest of your answer. This is the part where the examiner will start the assessment of your writing skills and therefore you need to make sure it is written in the best possible way and as per the IELTS norms.

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A Guide to Concise Writing

Writing Tips

12 Sep 2017

In writing, conciseness is essential. You have to fill out your 250-word-essay by using topic-related words, not just some popular weasel words. The IELTS examiners are trained to know it immediately if you are using a memorizing phrase on the Internet, and they will reduce your score everytime they see you do that.

Last month, when being asked to rephrase a topic sentence, a member in Let’s Write Something group wrote this:

Original sample: There are various methods to evaluate a country's progress. (9 words)

Attempt: The question of which methods should be used for the evaluation of a country's development process by the government has drawn much attention from the public. (26 words!)

Remember this: You will not earn a good score in Lexical Resource by lengthening your sentences. Doing that only net you approximately a 6.0 score.

What raise your Lexical Resource score is the topic-specific vocabulary. This means when the topic question is about health, you should use general medical terms (doctor, vaccine, disease, etc). The same with other topics: culture, education, technology, and so on. Simon has written an excellent post about this.

Lengthy sentences are the result of 5 reasons:

Nominalization

Nominalization is the procedure of changing a [VERB] into a [THE NOUN OF]. For example, a simple verb like “to evaluate” could be rewritten into “for the evaluation of” (2 words longer).

A common myth in the IELTS community is that you can earn good score by using noun phrases as much as you can. This is wrong, because noun phrases are only good when they shorten your answer, not when lengthening!

Example: Exchange programs cost a considerable amount of money, which a handful of students may be inaccessible.

Correction: The expensiveness of various exchange programs makes them inaccessible to many students.

In the above example, by using a noun phrase (“the expensiveness of various exchange programs”) instead of a sentence clause with Subject + Verb + Object (“exchange programs cost a considerable amount of money”), I have shortened the original sentence from 16 words to 12. This procedure is called noun clause reduction.

However, if you nominalize your sentences (simply rephrasing a verb into a noun phrase), for example “to indicate” -> “to be the indication of”, then you will only make your writing worse.

To avoid nominalization in writing, please check Louis Biggie’s guide.

However, nominalization appears very frequently in speaking, and for good reasons. So don’t hesitate to use them in an IELTS Speaking test.

2. Lengthy adjuncts

An adjunct acts similarly to an adjective, since both of them can modify a noun. For example, in the phrase “attention from the public”, the phrase “from the public” is an adjunct that modifies the word “attention”. By contrast, in the phrase “public attention” (which has the same meaning), “attention” is modified by the adjective “public” precedes it.

Usually, an adjunct is more wordy that an adjective with the same meaning, so it’s best to save them for when you want to emphasize something.

3. Unnecessary expletive constructions

Expletive constructions are phrases such as it is / there is / there are.

Generally, try to avoid using them, since these constructions merely obscure the main subject and action of a sentence.

Example: It is inevitable that oil prices will rise. (8 words)
Correction: Oil prices will inevitably rise. (5 words)

However, there are some exceptions:

Example 1: It’s raining. The word “it” is a dummy subject, so we cannot remove “it’s”.

Example 2: There are various methods to evaluate a country's progress. If we remove “there are”, then the sentence will become ungrammatical. The whole sentence here is in pseudo passive voice since the real subject is missing - we do not know who evaluates a country’s progress, but the author does not use the structure of passive voice (to be + past participle).

4. Unnecessary time expression

For some reasons, many Chinese and Vietnamese IELTS candidates love to start their essay with “in recent times”. Alternatives would be “nowadays”, and “today”, which are kinda the same.

If you need to talk about an ongoing trend, simply change the grammatical tense from present simple to present continous or present perfect continous.

5. Unnecessary “of”

Instead of using “of” like this: “the opinion of the manager” (5 words), I suggest you use the possessive form: “the manager's opinion” (3 words)