IELTS Writing Tracks – from the video of Simon

Four paragraphs recommanded:

• Introduction: just rephrasing the introduction in the question
• Overview: Give the overview, which is thorough, and key points you want to mention. Make a general comparison, a summary.
• Details 1: blablabla

• Details 2: blablabla

  Noted that: no conclusion.

I will show you an example.

Example question:

The bar chart compares the number of mobile phones sold worldwide by the five most popular manufactures in the years 2009, 2011, and 2013.

It is clear that Nokia sold the most mobile phones between 2009 and 2011, but Samsung became the best selling brand in 2013. Samsung and Apple saw the biggest rises in sales over the 5-year period.

In 2009, Nokia sold close to 450 million mobile phones, which was almost double the number of handsets sold by the second most successful manufactures, Samsung. Over the following four years, however, Nokia's sales figures fell by approximately 200 million units, whereas Samsung saw sales rise by a similar amount. By 2013, Samsung had become the market leader with sales reaching 450 million units.

The other three top selling mobile phone brands between 2009 and 2013 were LG, ZTE and Apple. In 2009, these companies sold around 125 million, 50 million and 25 million mobile handsets respectively, but Apple overtook the other two vendors in 2011. In 2013, purchases of Apple handsets reached 150 million units, while LG saw declining sales and the figures for ZTE rose only slightly.

Example:

The pie charts compare five categories of household expenditure in the UK and New Zealand in the years 1980 and 2008.

It is noticeable that the proportion of spending on food and drink fell in both countries over the 28-year period, while spending on utility bills rose. Also, UK residents spent a significantly larger percentage of their household budgets on leisure than their New Zealand counterparts.

In 1980, 29% of an average New Zealand household budget went on food and drink, while the equivalent figure for a UK home was 23%. By 2008, expenditure on food and drink had fallen by 4% in New Zealand, and by a full 10% in the UK. By contrast, both countries saw an increase in expenditure on utility bills for the average home, form 27% to 31% in New Zealand and from 26% to 28% in the UK.

Leisure activities accounted for the highest proportion of UK household spending in both years, but only the third highest proportion in New Zealand. In fact, in 2008, New Zealanders spent only half as much in relative terms on recreation (17%) as UK residents (34%). In both countries, transport costs and other costs took roughly 15% and 10% of household budgets, respectively.

Example:

The table compares the five highest ranking countries in terms of the numbers of visits and the money spent by tourists over a period of two years.

It is clear that France was the world's most popular tourists destination in the years 2012 and 2013. However, the USA earned by far the most revenue from tourism over the same period.

In 2012, 83 milliion tourists visited France, and the USA was the second most visited country, with 66.7 million tourists. Spain and China each received just under 58 million visitors, while Italy was ranked fifth with 46.4 million tourists. 2013 saw a rise of between 1 and 4 million tourist visits to each country, with the exception of China, which received 2 million fewer visitors than in the previous year.

Spending by tourists visiting the USA increased from $126.2 billion in 2012 to $139.6 billion in 2013, and these figures were well over twice as high as those for any other country. Spain received the second highest amounts of tourist revenue, rising from $56.3 billion to $60.4 billion, followed by France, China, and Italy. Interestingly, despite falling numbers of tourists, Chinese revenue from tourism rose by $1.7 billion in 2013.

Note: You cannot mention all the numbers in the table.

Solution: we can summerize the main feature of these two charts, as the introduction, and then describe the details of these two charts seperately, as paragraph 3 and paragraph 4.

The bar chart compares the numbers of males and femails who took four different evening classes in 2009, and the pie chart shows the age profile of these attendees.

It is clear that significantly more women than men attended evening classes at the education centre. We can also see that evening courses were much more popular among older adults.

According to the bar chart, drama, painting and language courses all attracted more women than men to the education centre in 2009. Lnaguage classes had the highest number of participants overall, with 40 female and 20 male students, while painting was a popular choice among both genders, attracting 30 female and 25 male attendees. The only course with a higher number of males was sculpture, but this course was taken by a mere 15 people in total.

Looking at the age profile pie chart, we can see that the majority of people attending evening lessons were over 40 years of age. To be precise, 42% of them were aged 50 or more, and 26% were aged between 40 and 49. Yonger adults were in the minority, with only 11% of students aged 20 to 29, and only 5% aged under 20.

• Step Language
  • At the first stage in the process
  • The process begins with
  • Secondly, Finally
  • The second step involves
  • Next, then, after that
  • At the following stage
• passive verbs
  • like "glass is collected" for "glass collection"
  • sorting by hand: like "the collected glass is sorted by hand"
  • Grinding machine: we donnot know the passive of griding, so we use"the glass is passed through a grinding machine."

Example:

The first flow diagram illustrates the process of glass container production, and the second diagram shows steps in the process of recycling used glass.

We can see that glass is made using three main raw materials, and that the manufacturing process consists of four distinct stages. It requires five steps to turn used glass into new glass products.

At the first stage in the production of glass, sand, soda ash, limestone and other chemicals are mixed together. Next, this mixture is heated in a glass furnace at approximately 1500oC to produce molten glass. The molten glass can then be shaped, by blowing, to create the end products, namely glass containers.

Glass recycling begins with the collection of used glass products. The collected glass is sorted according to its colour, and then washed in order to remove any impurities. At the fourth stage of recycling, the glass is crushed and melted, and the resulting molten glass can finally be moduled to create new items.

• MAP: before and after diagram
• two alternative diagrams

• compare and select a location

  Just compare the diagrams, by:

  • describe the changes
  • and things not changed
  • and differences
  • and similarities

Example:

The two pictures compare the current layout of the ground floor of a house with a plan to redesign the same living space.

We can see that the new design proposal involves making a number of changes to the ground floor of the house, mainly in the central hall area. There are no plans to change the external walls or entrances.

The most noticeable change from the existing to the proposed floor plan is that there will no longer be a separate hall area when the building work has been done. This will be achieved by removing the internal wall and door between the hall and living room, along with the current staircase and under-stair storage cupboard. With no separate hall area, the proposed living room will also contain the staircase to the first floor.

To replace the current straight staircase, a new set of winding stairs will be installed in the corner of the living room. The internal door between the hall and kitchen will also be replaced with the new living room. Finally, the planned building work will also include the installation of some kitchen furniture.

1. sentence 1: introduce the topic
2. sentence 2: give the general answer

There are several introduction writing examples:

Paradigram:

• Do not show new idea. Just repeat.
• Only one sentence.

How to do that?

Just paraphrase the sentence (the second one) in introduction.

Here is an example:

In conclusion, I would argue that the advantages of using video security systems in public places do outweigh the disadvantages.