Task 1: Writing a good introduction
A lot of students have problems in writing a good Task 1 introduction and often end up with a lot of the original Task 1 introduction sill there.
For example:
The chart below shows the percentage of households in owned and rented accommodation in England and Wales between 1918 and 2011.
Student Version
The chart describes the proportions of households in owned and rented houses in the years between 1918 and 2011 in England and Wales.
The underlined text is an exact copy of the original Task 1 introduction.
Note: The order of the countries and years has been changed but no attempt to change the phrases has been made.
How to modify your introduction
There are three main ways to paraphrase:
- Change the order of some short phrases e.g.
“teenagers in Australia” = “Australian teenagers” - Use synonyms for certain words e.g.
“manufacturers of different cloth” = producers of a range of material”
Note: Make sure that the synonym you want to use really has the same meaning as the word you want to replace. Not all synonyms are compatible. It depends on the context.
- Add extra information from the chart e.g.
- Type of chart
- Time period
- State the number of categories
[Note: It is not always possible to do all of these in every chart.]
Model introduction
If we use these ideas with the introduction seen above we can write our introduction as follows:
“The bar chart presents the proportion of families who had bought or rented housing in England and Wales from 1918 to 2011.”
Household – noun
Meaning: a house and its occupants regarded as a unit
Synonyms: family, house, occupants, residents, ménage
Synonyms: family, house, occupants, residents, ménage
Accommodation – noun
Meaning: a room, group of rooms, or building in which someone may live or stay
Synonyms: housing, lodging(s), living quarters, quarters, rooms
Own – verb
Meaning: have (something) as one’s own; possess
Synonyms: be the owner of, possess
Rather than use a synonym I realized that if you “own something” you must have “bought” it so I used that instead.
If you would like me to correct your writing please see the link below for information:
www.ieltsanswers.com/writing-correction-ielts.html