IELTS Academic Task 1 – How to Describe a Pie Chart (and score Band 7 or higher)
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You are now listening to the IELTS podcast. Learn from tutors and ex-examiners who are masters of IELTS preparation. Your host, Ben Worthington. IELTS academic task one. How to describe a pie chart. Hi there, my name is Ben Worthington. And for this tutorial, we are going to dive into the basics.

just a high level structure the vocabulary you need the special techniques

And I'm going to finish with a warning. Now, for those of you on Spotify, this is the first video podcast I have released. I'll probably put it on YouTube as well. And it's kind of ironic because when I started, my dad joked I had a face for radio when I started this whole project about 10 years, 12 years ago. He said, Ben, you've got a face for radio. You'll just

You'll do excellent. You'll do well in podcasting. Oh, gone full circle now. And we're doing video podcasts. There you go. Right then. As I said, we're going to first look at the... Sorry, we're going to look at some useful features. Then we're going to look at the structure. And then I'm going to give you a quick warning regarding your IELTS preparation, especially which tutors to listen to, which tutors to follow. Let's jump into it.

So you're preparing for the IELTS exam. You're probably in Australia, in the UK or in Canada and you want to stay in Canada or Australia. You want to work in the UK or you want to go study in the UK. Well, you're not alone.

We help hundreds and thousands of students every single week via the podcast, via YouTube channel, via the AI Essay Checker, via the Speaking Simulator.

by all the material we put out by all the tools that we share so you're not alone and I cannot tell you the amount of emails I get from students who are frustrated who are stuck at 6.5 so this is why I wanted to make this specific tutorial just to help you and to just give you that motivation as well and this is where it all comes down to you know

There's a lot of students out there who go searching for the quick fix, go searching for that silver bullet, for the magic answer. And what I found is that it's the students who are doing the hard work, writing an essay every single day, you know, and just putting in the work. And let me just tell you something. You could study, you should study, but you don't study.

now you've got a big problem on your hands so this is why I think any decent IELTS tutor any decent tutor should be able to motivate you as well to take action because that's where the results happen that's where the results are is when you are taking action so let's just zoom out a bit and let's just look at the IELTS exam it's not merely

a language test it can be a bit misleading but for IELTS academic task one it goes beyond language it goes into your ability to you know describe numbers describe graphs describe charts to interpret the data to extract the key points

that's what I'm going to help you to help you with today and that's where I think a lot of the frustration or a part of the frustration is is because the IELTS exam it goes beyond the actual English language and it's the same for task two you've got to think of ideas you've got to organize those ideas you've got to give them you've got to communicate those ideas

in a format the examiner wants and today we're going to just focus on IELTS academic task 1 specifically describing a pie chart so if you are stuck at 6.5 and you think or you know that it's the academic task 1 that is holding you back then this tutorial is going to help you before we jump into it

let me just say for your IELTS score to change you have to change you have to change your preparation techniques and I think in most cases it's a question of doing more upping the activity level writing more essays and getting more feedback and in the past this was probably harder

because you had to submit it to an IELTS examiner, an experienced IELTS tutor, and get feedback. We do that. We still do that. We still accept essays, but most of the students...

Practically 90% of all our students now are just using our AI Essay Checker. So this is what I'm saying. Now we've got the tools for you to take action, to spend a whole afternoon writing essays, getting feedback, pinpointing the errors where you're losing points, rewriting sentences, focusing on the grammar points. Things have changed. It's gotten easier. It's gotten simpler now.

and a little bit easier. It's got more convenient. That's the better way to say it. It's more convenient now. You don't have to wait 24 hours or three days for your essay to be returned. You can get that feedback in a matter of minutes. And again, like I said before, you could use the essay feedback tool that we've got at IELTS Podcast. You should use it

you would use it but if you don't use it now we've got a problem because it's going to be difficult to improve it's going to be near impossible to improve on information alone so just one last thing as well and then we'll get into the pie chart description so I just want to say don't wish the IELTS exam was easier just wish for more skills

okay wish for more language skills wish for more exam skills and in fact you don't actually have to wish for it you just have to take action you will get there IELTS is probably not the first obstacle that you've overcome you you got qualifications you've got exams and you learn the English language to a high level already otherwise you wouldn't be able to understand me so it's just a question of

of getting the skills you need in order to get past that 6.5, in order to get that 7, that 8 or that 9 and improve. So that's what I just wanted to share before we jump into it. So let's go into the pie charts. For the pie chart description, your key friend here are superlatives. Okay, your ability to use superlatives

effectively and accurately will greatly enhance your chances of success because superlatives will force you to identify the key points in the chart and if you're more advanced you can move away from the biggest section the smallest section and use more sophisticated language such as the most significant portion

okay or the largest sector and just move away from those um basic adjectives such as big and small and the same for task two don't use good bad big and small all of that use more sophisticated language let's get that seven let's get that eight let's get that nine let's get to australia let's get to the uk let's get to canada let's get to stay in those countries so moving on

just one last thing these superlatives they're like spotlights okay and they will highlight the most important information so you need to review those grammar rules and move away from the more basic ones try to adopt the more advanced ones key skill here it's a little bit old school but what you can do is copy out model task one sample essays

sentence by sentence now this will be boring but it's good to do at the end of the day say for example you finished work your brains dead you

you don't have the mental capacity to write a full task 2 or task 1 essay so you can do this activity and just copy out the sample task 1 essay you can and then if you've once you've started warming up you can start copying a sentence or look at a sentence cover it up and write it or type it out from memory another activity you can do is to read but actively read and look at

sentences that you believe are high quality and then start writing them out and adapting them making them your own and you can even do this with Google Docs 95% of the time as a native English speaker I mean I'm using Google Docs but 95% of the time it gets it right and it highlights the grammar error so that's cost effective it's zero cost to use Google Docs

and you can get started straight away if you want more detailed feedback more advanced feedback more sophisticated feedback if you want to use a tool that considers the whole paragraph the whole essay then you might want to have a look at ieltspodcast.com our essay checker there you can use the free version or you can upgrade to the premium one because i think that's where most of the value is next point fractions and proportions this is what i was saying before

IELTS goes beyond a normal language exam you need to have a good grasp of these numbers you need to know that 30% is roughly a third 50% is exactly a half 75% is three quarters review this

basic mathematics and this is why I think you know students in the humanities study social science or international business whatever

might struggle a little bit more and not international business but art students or design students might struggle a little bit more with this that's the frustrating part one of the frustrating parts of the IELTS but a good review of these numbers will then set you up for using fancier sentences where we can say

for example if it's 26% we can say just over a quarter and use these more descriptive sentences that help us score points because they increase the variety of grammatical structures and vocabulary which obviously helps us with lexical resource and grammatical range and accuracy two key criteria

for the IELTS academic task one test and then the next stage would be saying like I don't know let's just say the percentage or the sector for corn export is nearly three times the size of the sector for or the section for wheat exports in 2024 for example

Can you see? And we just use more advanced descriptive features to paint the picture of the pie charts that we are trying to describe. It's nearly double that. It's three times the size of. And these just add a little bit more colour, a little bit more depth, a little bit more variety into our IELTS Academic Task 1 description. The third point I want to mention

is comparatives and this is what I was saying before twice as large but the key point here is to compare the data but not just say is bigger than the previous sector is larger than corn exports for example but add that richness it's three times as large nearly three times as large it doesn't have to be exact but we want to give a rough picture

two more points here if you're struggling to get to pull the key features out try moving back away from the byte from the pie chart blur your eyes and then you will just see a rough outline and the sections that are still standing out those are the ones you definitely need to include final points do not list every single data point

just try to pick out the key points here okay and final final final point is remember just to group it so if you've got three small sections try to put those all together in one sentence if you've got two large sections of the pie chart put those together and then we can compare we say oh the three largest

sorry the three smallest sections still don't add up to half of the largest section which shows the dominance of corn exports in 2024 or whatever now just remember though that accuracy is insanely important here do not get carried away with fancy language

be precise and let the data speak for itself now moving on to the framework that we are going to use we're going to have an introduction here we just paraphrase the title of the chart let's not over complicate it remember we never add additional information so for example if we just go back to that description before about the

agricultural exports and corn exports or whatever if we know that the reason why corn exports were the largest in 2024 maybe because of a bumper season in the Midwest in the US or whatever we do not add that extra information we can only describe what's in front of us so just be careful there next in our framework we've got the introduction which we've paraphrased the title and

and we've paid key attention to the details in the chat so if we're talking about exports and it's in metric tons we mention metric tons if and we say a range of agricultural products okay we don't have to mention every single one which goes back to what I was saying about mentioning every single key data point avoid that

after our introduction we might have one or two body paragraphs depending on the pie chart or pie charts that we've got in front of us and here the key is to group the information use your superlatives use your comparative comparatives use your fractions and create a narrative that flows logically the best example the best way I can

share this is for example we might have a chronological chart imagine we're just doing a line chart describing a line chart but we've got the data chronologically in front of us so it might start at 1970 and finish in 2030 or let's just say it starts in 1974 ends in 19 in 2024 so we've got 50 years of data there

the natural way to do this would be just to start with 1970 and likewise with the pie charts first we see a chart about agricultural products and then below or next to it we see a chart about agricultural exports from a different country or from a different range of products just start with the one that your eyes see first that's the most logical way to do this

and then the summary sometimes I will teach especially if you're struggling with time management you want to get your summary after your introduction but if you are completely on top of your time management then you can put your summary at the end just remember not to write conclusion because conclusion is a phrase we use after we've argued different points to conclude

Here, it's a summary and we can usually start this with "Overall, it is clear that corn exports for Vietnam were the largest exports whereas for Cambodia it was rice." Whatever, just the key points.

all we need to include in our overall sentence that we either put at the end or straight after the introduction depending on your writing skills and largely depending on your time management skills if you've written a few essays and you notice you forget the intro the summary then put it after your introduction straight away and just try and follow that structure

In our Academic Task 1 course, we have a much more detailed framework that kind of just forces you to cover all the points in there and this speeds up your writing. Right now, I've only got time to share a basic framework. Now then, some final points because succeeding in IELTS is not just about the language skills.

It's not just about the exam skills. You need both of them. But you also need a high level of tenacity. And how do you get this tenacity? Well, there's a phrase in English and it says, discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments. Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments. So how do we apply this to IELTS? Well, we have a disciplined IELTS.

schedule we have a disciplined time frame I'm going to discipline a disciplined following of the goals we set ourselves I'm going to write two essays every day I'm going to dedicate myself I'm going to dedicate one hour

of IELTS preparation every single day. And if you get there and it comes to that point of the day, I totally understand. Sometimes you're not in the best frame of mind. So just do a basic exercise to get warmed up. Like the one I mentioned before, the look, cover, write, or reading, actively reading, or just copying it out word for word. You'll either find that you're too brain dead and you just carry on copying it out. That's better than nothing.

Or what happens to me personally is my brain starts warming up and I'll go in to, I'll just get warmed up and I'll start doing more taxing, more difficult tasks. For example, I might just say, okay, I'm tired. It's 8 p.m. I need to respond to some students. I'll just go in and I'll start responding. That's it. But then maybe after 15 minutes, I'll be like, actually, I'm warmed up now.

Let's go and check some essays in the essay checker. Let's go and start giving some feedback, for example. And this is the key part. Success in IELTS takes effort. And where does effort come from? It comes from discipline. So it's just having that structure in place.

and for all the IELTS students out there especially the international students if you're based in Australia and Canada or the UK or your goal is to get to these countries okay just remember that there are going to be difficulties there are going to be knock you are going to get knocked back okay and if you are stuck at 6.5

then you need to change the way you are preparing. You need to start using tools rather than information. And this is why we released our AI Essay Checker, just to give you that faster feedback, to help you improve quicker, and just to move you towards that band seven like we've been getting for years.

all the students obviously I'd love to say all the students that work with us but not all the students that work with us put in the work obviously but the ones who do will reach their goals they will get that band seven and they do end up with the permanent residency the settled status the job in the NHS or the place in that university and there's no reason you can't do it either so

It's not just a case of mastering the English language. It's mastering the language skills, the exam skills. And thirdly, probably most importantly, just that inner head game, you know, that discipline. And as I said, the discipline, discipline is the bridge between achievement. No, it's not. I just, discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment. There we go.

So there we go. Don't just wish for an easier exam test. Wish for more exam skills. Wish for more language skills. Don't actually wish for them. Get them. Get them. How do you get them? Through motivation.

through that dedication and you can do this you know you've probably accomplished many goals you've definitely learned the English language otherwise you wouldn't be able to understand me so you're 90% of the way there keep moving keep pushing you will get there and if you do need help reach out to us at IELTS podcast

go to ieltspodcast.com, get on the newsletter, you'll get my email. I respond to 95% of the emails. Some of them go to spam and never get responded to, unfortunately. But now I'm checking spam, so the percent is probably higher to 99%. But I do aim to respond to all of them. Take action, write essays, and you will get that band 7A on. Good luck to you, and thanks for watching, listening, and have a great day.

Thanks for listening to ieltspodcast.com.