IELTS Writing Task 1: the 20-minute report (and letter)

Task 1 gives you 20 minutes and 150 words to prove you can select, organise and report — a chart or process on Academic, a letter on General Training. This guide covers how it is really scored, a model report taken apart, every chart type, letter register, and the routine that fits it all into 20 minutes.

What Task 1 is — a report, not an essay

Task 1 is the short one: minimum 150 words, suggested 20 minutes, and it counts for one third of your Writing band (Task 2 carries double weight). What you write depends on your test type. Academic candidates describe a visual — a line graph, bar chart, pie chart, table, process diagram, map, or a combination. General Training candidates write a letter — formal, semi-formal or informal, depending on who they are writing to.

Both versions test the same underlying skill: can you select what matters, organise it, and report it accurately in the right register? Neither asks for your opinion about the topic. A Task 1 answer that argues, speculates or explains causes has misunderstood the job — and Task Achievement pays for it.

How it's scored — and the one sentence worth more than any other

Four criteria, 25% each: Task Achievement, Coherence & Cohesion, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range & Accuracy. Three of them work exactly as they do in Task 2. Task Achievement is the one with its own rules, and in Task 1 it comes down to three things:

• An overview. One or two sentences summarising the main pattern — what went up, what dominated, what changed. Without a clear overview, the Task Achievement descriptors stop you at 5.0 no matter how good your English is.
• Key features, selected. The examiner wants the two or three things a reader would actually need to know — not a tour of every data point.
• Accurate data. Claims supported by correct figures from the visual. "Housing costs rose sharply" is a claim; "Housing costs rose from £200 to £350" is a report.

That first item deserves repeating, because it is the highest-value sentence in the entire Writing test relative to effort. The overview takes thirty seconds to write once you have seen the pattern, and its absence is the single most common reason a competent candidate scores 6.0 instead of 7.0 on this task. Most people lose marks here — not on grammar, not on vocabulary, on a missing sentence.

A worked Academic example: bar chart

Here is a typical grouped bar chart. Before reading the model, try the planning step yourself: what changed, what stayed dominant, and which category moved fastest in proportional terms?

Every Academic type, and what "key features" means for each

Line graphs

Line graphs are about change over time, so your key features are direction, speed and relationships: what rose, what fell, where lines cross, and where they end up. In a graph like the one below, the overview writes itself — all three countries grew, one led throughout, and the slowest starter was catching up fastest by the end. Start and end values, plus one or two turning points, are usually all the data you need.

Pie charts and tables

These are usually static comparisons, so the features are proportions: the largest share, the smallest, anything surprising, and sensible groupings ("the two service categories together accounted for over half"). With tables, resist the trap of the rows — pick the extremes and the pattern, and let the rest go unreported.

Multiple charts

Two visuals means one extra job: connect them. Give each its own body paragraph, but make the overview say something about both — that is what separates a report from two half-reports stapled together.

Process diagrams

A process has no data, so Task Achievement changes shape: your key features are the number of stages, where the process starts and ends, and any point where something transforms or repeats. Language changes too — sequencing words (first, once, after which) and the passive voice ("the glass is crushed and then melted") do most of the work. The overview is simply the shape of the process: "There are five main stages, beginning with collection and ending with moulding into new products."

Maps

Maps are almost always before-and-after. Report what was added, removed, expanded or converted, using location language (in the north-east corner, opposite the station) and the passive ("the farmland was replaced by a housing estate"). The overview states the scale of change: "The town centre was extensively redeveloped, with most green space giving way to commercial buildings."

General Training Task 1: the letter

GT candidates get a situation and three bullet points — describe this, explain that, request the other. The bullets are your Task Achievement checklist: miss one and the score is capped, however fluent the letter. The other decision is register, and it is set by one question: who are you writing to?

• Formal — someone you don't know, usually an organisation: a manager, a council, a landlord you have never met. No contractions, no chat.
• Semi-formal — someone you know in a professional role: your boss, a neighbour you deal with politely. Named greeting ("Dear Mr Reed"), courteous but slightly warmer.
• Informal — a friend or family member. Contractions, everyday phrasing, natural warmth. Writing to a friend in business English reads as oddly as slang in a complaint letter, and Lexical Resource notices both.

The six mistakes markers see every day

• No overview. Still the number one Task Achievement killer on Academic. A report without an overview is a list of observations, and it is capped accordingly.
• Copying the prompt. Lifting the question wording into your introduction earns nothing — paraphrase it in your own words ("average weekly household spending" becomes "how much households spent each week"). Copied wording also pads you toward 150 words without adding anything the examiner can credit.
• Describing every number. "In 1995 food was £150. In 2025 food was £240. In 1995 transport was £80…" Selection is the skill being tested. Grouped, compared features score; inventories don't.
• Inventing causes and opinions. "Housing rose because of inflation" or "the government should address this" — the chart says nothing about why, and Task 1 never asks what you think. Report the what; leave the why alone.
• Claims without data. The mirror image of the inventory: trends described with no figures at all. On Academic, every main feature needs at least one number attached.
• GT: a missed bullet or a broken register. Skipping one of the three bullet points caps Task Achievement, and drifting from "Dear Sir or Madam" into "Anyway, sort it out, cheers" costs Lexical Resource. Pick a register in the greeting and hold it to the sign-off.

The 20-minute routine

Twenty minutes is enough — if none of it is spent staring. Split it the same way every time so the structure runs on rails while your attention goes to the data.

1. Minutes 1–3: read and plan. What is measured, in what units, over what period? Find the two or three key features and decide your grouping — which features share a paragraph. On GT, underline the three bullets and note one detail for each.
2. Minutes 4–5: introduction + overview. One sentence paraphrasing the task, then the overview. Ten percent of your time buys the sentence worth the most marks.
3. Minutes 6–18: two body paragraphs. One group of features each, with accurate figures (Academic) or one to two bullets each with specifics (GT). If time runs short, cut detail from the second paragraph — never the overview.
4. Minutes 19–20: check. Numbers against the chart, tense against the time period (a 1995–2025 chart is past tense), plurals, and the count — are you safely over 150 words?

From 6.0 to 7.0: what actually changes

The band descriptors describe 6 as competent despite errors and 7 as good, operational command with occasional errors. On Task 1 that abstract difference turns into five concrete habits:

The practical translation: fix the overview habit first — it is the cheapest half-band available anywhere in IELTS Writing. Then build a bank of ten precise verbs of change and five comparison structures, and drill them until they come out clean under time pressure. That is a two-to-three-week project, not a course.