Lesson on Writing IELTS Line Graphs

In this lesson on writing IELTS line graphs we'll look at the stages you need to go through to write an effective response to get a high score.

We'll look at a fairly easy question in order to do this. Take a look at this example:

The Planning Stage

Review the visuals and question

Read through the question quickly and have a look at the visual for a basic understanding. This quick review allows you to get a general overview of the question. When we do this with the question above we see it’s a question about male and female graduates and that the trend is upwards overall.

Identify the key points

Analyse the visual more deeply and identify and note the key features of the visual. For instance, when we look at the graph in the question with a more critical eye we can see that the features of the graph are:

1. More women than men graduated from Canadian universities
2. There has been a large increase in graduates since 2001
3. Levels of graduates for both men and women stayed roughly the same between 1992-2001
4. The gap between the sexes has also increased from the start to the end of the period (30k - 50k).
5. They both follow similar patterns (fluctuating slightly then increasing)

These things you have identified are key features of the line graph so you'd need to make sure they are covered in your response at some point.

Identify your comparison points

The question always asks you to make comparisons. In most questions there are some options on what you should compare and its important that you choose the options that will ensure your response is coherent and easy to follow.

The key points you identified above reveal various points of comparison e.g. the gaps between females and males widening after 2001. 

Organisation: determine your paragraphs

The Writing Stage

Write your Introduction

Now its time to actually start writing. There are two steps we need to follow to do this

1. Go back and review the question and graph again as your first sentence with be a reworking of the original question. Make sure you change the verbs, and try to rephrase each element. You will often find there is additional information on the graph that wasn’t included in the original question. Include it now.
   
   
2. Select one or two of your main points and write a short sentence for each to be included after the introduction sentence. This often called an overview. You can also use one complex sentence rather than two simple sentences if you are feeling adventurous.

For example, the wording in the question is this:

The graph below shows the number of university graduates in Canada from 1992 to 2007. 

So our rephrasing may look something like this:

As you can see we have changed the verbs here, introduced new information from the graph (male and female) and rephrased the topic and the timeline. Now time to select and add our key points. This could look as follows:

This gives us a final introductory paragraph of

Write body paragraph 1

Here we outline the key points based on how we determined the paragraphs. When you decide upon your main point, you should lay this out in your topic sentence. This should then be followed by some data to demonstrate your point in sentences 2 and 3.

For example, we determined in our task that it would be better to split the graph in 2001, so the main point of this paragraph is going to be a steady level of graduates and ratio of males and females.

Our opening sentence may look something like this:

Now we need to provide some data to back up this point:

This gives us a first body paragraph of:

Write body paragraph 2

Repeat the last step for paragraph 2 based on the structure your determined in step 4.

For example, in our task, the second body paragraph is about 2001-2007. Again, we need to place the main feature/features up front.

Note this actually combines the two key points we used in the introduction. We now need to add the data:

This gives us the final piece in the puzzle of writing IELTS line graphs. Our task 1 text is now:

Review and Edit

Review and edit your text for errors, awkward phrases and improvement. But don’t go nuts!

The Language

You'll have noticed that when writing IELTS line graphs you use both language for comparing and contrasting (e.g. whilst; identical; much lower; whereas) and the language of change (e.g. large increase; relatively stable; fluctuated; reached maximum highs).

Using this language correctly and varying your lexis is also critical to getting a high score, as is making use of mix of sentences structures (i.e. simple, compound, complex). 

We'll not go into detail about this as it's been covered in other lessons, so check those out here if you want to learn more:

• Using the language of change
• Comparing and contrasting
• Sentence structures

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