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Grammar Questions for IELTS Task 1

by Pinki Gupta
(Sydney)

Articles with Nouns



I read that indefinite article a/an is used for countable nouns only. Comparing the following two sentences, which of these is correct.

1. There was a sharp rise in prices.
2. There was sharp rise in prices.

I am confused as both seem correct to me.

Comments for Grammar Questions for IELTS Task 1

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Sep 25, 2016
 Articles
by: IELTS buddy

I think you are getting confused as to which noun the article is referring to.

The noun the 'a' goes with is 'rise', not prices. So the correct one is:

1. There was a sharp rise in prices.

In other words, "A rise".

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How to use "as much as / as many as" in graphs

by zohreh
(shefffield)

Hi Thank you for your helpful information. May I ask you to describe about correct usage of (as much/many as)? For instance is it right to say: This industry consumes ground water 9 times higher as much as public supply water?

The best wishes

Comments for How to use "as much as / as many as" in graphs

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Jun 15, 2013
 as much as / as many as
by: IELTS buddy

This industry consumes ground water 9 times higher as much as public supply water?

No, your sentence is not correct. There are quite a few errors with it, not just with "as much as".

The first point is this - you need to get your comparative structures correct. You should put the number or comparative phrase after the verb in this sentence. And "higher" is wrong also.

Once you change, both of these, the sentence will look like this::

"This industry consumes 9 times more ground water than.....("public water" does not make sense here so you must mean something else)".

"as much as" is used with uncountable nouns.

"as many as" is used with countable nouns (so you correctly used this one).

However, it can't be used with "9 times more". The phrase comes after the verb, so it needs to be used instead of this. It is used to say two things are the same. For example:

"This industry consumes as much ground water as the public supply".

Again, although the grammar is now correct, this does not seem to make sense to me so I think you may be misunderstanding whichever graph you are looking at.

Another way to use this phrase is for example:

"Spanish people spend $20 per week on fast food, which is as much as Italy".

Take a look at this lesson:

IELTS Task 1 Comparative Structures

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Flow chart-process of glass recycling

by Ying
(Auckland, New Zealand )

I am so confused with a practice test of a flow chart. It is talking about the process of glass recycling. In the task, should I use GLASS in general terms without putting 'es' afterwards?

However, once I started the writing... I feel much easier if I put glass into countable and using 'a' or 'es'. Has anybody come across this kind of question and already got an answer? Thanks

Comments for Flow chart-process of glass recycling

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Jan 17, 2017
 Glass recycling
by: IELTS buddy

If you are talking about glass generally then you would use just 'glass'.

The only time you use 'glasses' is if you are talking about the type of glasses you put a drink in. For example, 'He bought several new glasses at the shop'.

Or of course it is always 'glasses' if you talk about the ones you use to help you see.

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using an invalid verb to describe a part of a graph

by Nima
(Tehran)


the graph was about the percentage of British household's car ownership.
the percentage for those having two cars started at 9% then increased to around 20% and then leveled off at 22%.
However, I mistakenly wrote "tailed off" instead of "leveled off".
how much mark will I lose if I have explained everything else correct with high level grammar?

Comments for using an invalid verb to describe a part of a graph

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Oct 02, 2018
 using an invalid verb
by: IELTS buddy

It's not possible to answer your question.

It's unlikely you made no other errors in your graph unless you are completely fluent in English, so there were probably other errors the examiner had to take account of.

And on that basis, your grammar and vocabulary are marked on the basis not of one error, but the density and type of errors made throughout your answers.

It's best if you look at the public IELTS band descriptors for the writing. There you'll see that grammatical range and accuracy and lexical resource consist of a number of criteria.

So you can't pick on error out and judge your score on that.

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