Welcome to My IELTS Classroom, the podcast where two English experts talk all things IELTS.
I'm Shelley Cornick.
And I'm Nick Long.
And today we are looking at the four report questions from Cambridge IELTS 17.
What is the simple recipe for success in an IELTS report?
How do Nick and I think you should approach each of the four tasks and which one do we think is the most difficult in Cambridge 17?
Good evening, Nick.
How are you doing?
Good evening.
Have you had a good weekend?
That was my very bad Scottish accent because I have had a good weekend.
Have you?
What have you been doing?
Why are you giving me a Scottish accent?
Because I made some homemade Scottish tablet.
Scottish tablets.
I have no idea what that is.
Not tablets, because that sounds a little bit... Oh.
It sounds like something different, but Scottish tablet.
It's an uncountable noun.
You've said you've made it.
Mm-hmm.
So I'm guessing it's some type of food.
Yeah, it's a very sweet and tasty Scottish treat.
Is it?
Yeah.
I don't know actually, where it's from, but my grandma, well my mum's family, are all from the borders, like 25 miles south of Edinburgh.
Yeah.
And it was a big thing there.
And my grandma used to buy it from the bakery when she went as a treat for us.
And you have it like a little square after dinner or on a Saturday afternoon with a can of Coke.
Well, no, not a can of Coke.
I don't touch that stuff.
But I mean, this is worse than Coke, to be honest.
It's pure sugar.
It's pure sugar, yeah.
But it's very, it's like kind of like fudge, but hard.
And when you put it in, when you put it in your mouth, it kind of like melts in your mouth.
Oh, delicious.
It's absolutely delicious.
So yeah, I made that and I've eaten most of it and I feel very unhealthy today.
I was going to say, is there any left?
There is some left.
I did make a kilogram and a half, so.
Okay, well that should keep you going until about Wednesday.
I'm actually going to Edinburgh at the weekend.
Very nice.
So maybe I will see if I can find some proper Scottish tablet.
You will definitely be able to find some.
Or at least taste it.
You definitely should taste it as well.
100%.
Yeah, it's a taste sensation.
I'm looking forward to that.
Taste sensation.
Very good.
I'm trying to organize my own taste sensation, Nick.
But rather than making something sweet, I've decided that this year I'm going to have a little herb garden in the back garden.
Oh, excellent.
We're going to do the same on our balcony.
Are you?
So I went to the garden centre this weekend.
Very expensive to buy a box to grow herbs in.
Really?
Wow.
Yeah, like sort of a three-tiered one is about £80.
Oh, my.
So I've decided I'm going to go to a car boot sale, buy some wood and make my own.
Yes, that's what I like to hear.
A herb growing station.
So stay tuned for developments to see how I get on with that.
I did do woodwork at school, which I thought was quite progressive for the 80s for girls.
Mm-hmm.
So see if I can remember how to join together tenons and mortons or whatever it was called, the different joins that you could do.
So, Nick, I got a bit sidetracked this week.
My plan for today was that we were definitely going to do the building paragraphs lesson.
That has not been forgotten.
We will be doing that next week.
But sometimes...
I get distracted during the week by something interesting or a question or something that I've been doing in class.
And this morning I was trying to send a student who I've been working with for quite a while a academic task.
One question
And I was having a look through all of the questions that I usually use.
And I thought, oh, do you know what?
I haven't looked at any of the questions.
I haven't started using the questions in the recent book.
So the Cambridge 17.
So I went through all of the questions.
I'm going to be honest, Nick.
I've just was quite surprised at.
The difficulty I guess I'm going to say of some of the questions inside that book.
I would say that they all are questions that look familiar.
So if you were just flicking through the book, you would just say okay, there's a bar chart, there's a line graph, there's a map.
So they all on the surface look kind of standard.
But once I actually was, you know, because I had a cup of tea and I was thinking about it and I started to think, you know, what would the key features be?
How would I organize? these reports.
I actually think some of these are much trickier than previous books.
So I thought what we could do today is, and I know you haven't looked at these before.
I haven't yet.
No, I like the surprise of it because it's going to be tricky.
I am putting you on the spot here.
So I thought what we'd do is really have a look at these questions, really just to offer our students some moral support.
Because if our students have been using this book and have been struggling with some of these reports, I can understand why.
So for some of them I'm not even sure that I've got answers, but I just thought the actual process of us looking at them and talking about them would help.
If you are new to IELTS or you are new to our podcast.
This probably isn't the best first lesson if you haven't started preparing for reports.
So if that is you...
What I would recommend that you might want to do is maybe pause this and go to our website, wwwmyioxclassroomcom.
Have a click on free videos and you can watch the first part.
Three videos in our academic Task 1 report writing course for free.
That's going to give you just an overview of what is expected of you in that course.
Things we're going to be talking about today actually go back to previous episodes we've done about Task 1.
We did an episode about maps and a new type of map.
We did.
I think anybody listening who hasn't done that should go back and do that first.
In the same way, we also did one about a new type of line graph last year.
Yeah, tricky one, that one.
I think that's also relevant for today.
So when I say that today's lesson is an advanced lesson, I say that in a kind way, because I just don't want anybody to feel overwhelmed.
All right.
Report writing is actually, if you, If you want it to be quite simple, but it can also be, if you're looking for the highest marks, quite complicated.
So we'll try and do a bit of both today, Nick.
We'll look at the simple way to approach these and the more complicated way to approach them.
But the final thing to say before we begin is that you can see all of these points, tasks or all of the diagrams on our website.
So if you go to blogmyieltsclassroomcom, what you might want to do before Nick and I start analysing them, Is have a look at these four questions yourself and just think you know.
What you should be thinking is what would the key features for these reports be and how would you organize them?
What would your approach be?
What are you going to be putting into the specific paragraphs?
That said Nick, just as a really simple support for anybody who is new, who wants to, you know, have a crack at this lesson in terms of the way we structure our report.
So we're going to be given some sort of diagram right today.
It might be a map.
It might be a line graph.
It might be a table.
Yeah.
For any report.
What are the sort of three parts of the report that the examiner is going to be looking for?
The introduction, first of all.
Yes.
And where are they going to get the information for that introduction?
The introduction comes from the title of the task.
Yeah.
So it's just a paraphrase, isn't it, of what we're told in the task.
So that's going to be your first paragraph.
What's going to come next?
Next, we're going to have what's called the overview.
Yes.
And what is that?
Well...
If you've been to university and you've had to read reports for some university course, usually when you look at a report you will see the title at the top.
And then there will be what's called sometimes an abstract or an overview, which basically shows on the first page, on the front page, it shows the findings already of the thing that they were investigating.
So in that overview you're going to give a very sort of general overview or analysis of the chart in a couple of sentences.
Yeah yeah, that's a great covering the main points basically Exactly.
I mean the way I think I teach it.
I've always taught.
It is kind of.
What you said is let's imagine Nick can see the chart and I can't.
And Nick, he doesn't, you know, I can't see the chart.
So all of the numbers and the statistics and that don't mean anything to me.
All I want Nick to do is say, you know, what is this chart actually telling us?
Yeah, in a couple of sentences.
Now, if you've done our task one course or if you've been studying IELTS for a long time, you should know that the overview is actually kind of the key or the most important thing in your report, because that is the basis.
The quality of your overview is really the foundation of your score for task achievement.
Yeah, and also, if you've got a good overview, if you found a couple of key features.
I would say for each chart you're going to be looking for two or three main themes.
And if you can knit those together into two sentences, I think you've done the perfect job.
And probably, depending on what those key features are, they may help you logically the third aspect of a report, which is Nick, The details.
The specific details.
So that's the point there where you switch from the general kind of summary that we've got in the overview to the actual giving of the trends including statistics that you can see um in the chart.
Now obviously, if you've got a map, those trends aren't going to include statistics but they will then include the specific changes or the things that happened.
If you've got a process, again there are no numbers, but then you're going to go and explain the actual specific steps in the process one by one.
The most important thing for those specific details is that you're summarizing what you can see on the chart and you're making comparisons.
So what you just want to be really careful of is that you make sure that you include all of the items shown on the chart.
So that just simply means if you give an I don't know a table that gives oil prices for England, America and Australia, You make sure you give me something about England, America and Australia.
There might be 10 years on that chart, so you don't have to give me every year, but you do have to mention each of the items.
So be very careful that you do that.
But we don't want to see every item.
We want to see...
The main points drawn out.
Now today, Nick, I don't think we'll really be looking so much at the specific details all the time.
I think we're going to be looking at more.
What will the key features be?
How would we structure then our specific details, paragraphs?
What would we discuss in the first?
What would we discuss in the second?
So I'm going to share my screen with Nick now.
And Nick, you can see that the first task is a map.
So do you want to just read the instruction?
I mean, it's going to be very difficult if you're just listening to this and you can't see the map.
I'm going to be honest, it's going to be impossible really to follow.
But just read out that, yeah, the task first.
So it says.
The maps below show an industrial area in the town of Norbiton and planned future development of the site.
Summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main features and make comparisons where relevant, which is always our task in Task 1, isn't it?
It is, exactly.
So that never changes.
So...
Nick, you might want a couple of minutes to have a look at this task and digest what you see.
I can tell you instantly what I see.
What do you see?
Disappointment.
Why?
The destruction of industry.
Right, exactly.
I mean, so...
For any, right.
So, I mean, you've just literally looked at this, Nick.
Okay.
So, you know, I think you've already maybe spotted the main key feature.
So if we look at the town today or sorry, the Norburton industrial area, it's not actually the town.
What is the Norburton industrial area?
It's an industrial area.
Yeah, it's just a load of factories, isn't it?
Yeah, it is.
And then in the future, what's it going to be?
It's going to be housing development.
I mean, it's literally almost like a mini extended town, isn't it?
Yeah, like a little suburb.
A suburb.
Right.
That's a good word.
All of the factories are gone.
Bye bye jobs for the people in the town.
And then its place is basically a housing estate, isn't it?
Yeah.
With a couple of other extra little sort of services there as well.
Yeah, amenities.
Presumably there's a school for the children who live in the houses, a little medical center and a parade of shops.
So, you know, if you're going to sum this up, we're not going to be talking about the details of all of. the bits that have changed but i mean in general i guess we'd want a sentence that says you know the norberton industrial area will no longer exist and it will be replaced um i don't know i think a suburb right would be i would say yeah i would say like a suburb or a housing development or a housing estate maybe A small housing estate with amenities to service it.
Mm-hmm.
Great.
I mean really, you might think that that one sentence summarizes everything, which it pretty much does.
However, I do think we always want a couple of sentences in our overview.
So once we've spoken about the change in the buildings, is there anything else we could mention?
Well, I definitely think we want to mention the farmland.
Yeah, we could mention the farmland to the north of the river.
The factories occupy the area south of the river.
They're all gone.
The road has stayed the same in places.
We've got a new roundabout installed and a couple of extra new roads as well.
Yeah.
But yeah, I think like north of the river, it's all farmland.
But now there's a bridge over the river, a road over the river and a sort of a long housing development as well.
Yeah.
So I agree with you.
I think probably once we've sort of spoken about...
That the buildings and the amenities, I do think we could talk about the road design, couldn't we?
And maybe the farmland.
So you might want to, as a second sentence, say you know however, although the original road design still exists, it has been extended and maybe most notably to the north of the river, replacing half of the farmland or something.
Yeah so, as you can see, if you're listening to this and you can't see our map, you don't actually you can't visualize the exact changes yet, right?
But what you know and that's what makes some good key features is that the industry is gone.
We've now got a housing estate and the road's kind of the same, but it's been extended.
I do think there's a really good opportunity here as well for a little bit of topic specific vocabulary.
We've got some of the development taking place on a brownfield site oh, And some of the development taking place on a greenfield site to the north.
So what's a brownfield site?
So brownfield is, let me give you an example, York, the city where I grew up.
It's surrounded by a greenfield, by a green belt, basically.
So there's no development allowed around the edge of York.
So what they did over the last 20, 25 years whenever there was a building or a factory that wasn't being used, they knocked it down and built some new housing, or they converted the factory into flats or something like that.
And that's what we called in the planning industry is what's called a brownfield site.
So it's replacing.
So a brownfield site would be where there's already some sort of building.
Yep.
So you're not building over anything green, basically.
And then replacing that with new types of building.
Whereas greenfield would be where you're taking something that's completely empty or pristine or green.
Wow.
I mean, that's bloody good.
Yeah.
That's really good.
Yeah, I mean, if you can incorporate that, that would be incredible.
I guess then the main decision we've got to do, we've got to make next.
And this comes back to our previous lesson on maps.
So again, this might be a bit confusing if you haven't watched that.
But, as we said before, like traditionally in IELTS, Map reports were always kind of approached by talking, you know by dividing whatever we were given into two specific areas.
So it might be the east of the town and the west of the town, or the north of the town and the south of the town.
And then just having, you know, one paragraph where we describe the east.
And one paragraph where we do the West or the North and the South, or it might be divided in terms of the types of changes.
So you could have, you know, the changes to housing in one paragraph and the changes to roads in another paragraph.
That's the traditional process. kind of way of approaching maps.
That used to be when we had big towns where lots of different things were happening or islands.
More recently, I also have been giving us maps of like one specific building.
So a sports center or, um, one specific, um, So it might be like a park.
So it's not a building always.
In those sorts of charts.
You might want to consider having a different type of organization, which is if you can see that you know when we use the sports center.
I think is our example, because that is one in the Cambridge books.
Yeah.
The original sports centre which we're shown is kind of incorporated or included in the future plan.
So it doesn't actually change very much.
Yeah, it's minimal.
So when you've got Yeah, so when the second map essentially just shows extensions to the first map, you might want to consider not dividing sports centres into, you know, east and west, which is a bit weird, but in the first paragraph, to literally describe what the sports centre is like now.
So that's going to be purely descriptive and probably quite short.
Mm-hmm.
And then in the second paragraph, explaining what has been added or what has been changed.
Now for this chart, Nick, what does your gut tell you might be the easiest way to do this one?
I'm not sure, to be honest.
I think what I would probably do i'd maybe talk about, maybe talk about the housing in one paragraph and then maybe talk about the services and the roads in another paragraph.
But i'm not confident in that all.
I don't think it's a good way to do it.
So Well, you could.
I mean, this is I think if you were a student looking at this, I think that would look quite an attractive way of doing it.
I think, and I'm saying this because I've had more time to think about it.
I think I might go for the sort of second type of approach, in that I might describe The first map in the first paragraph.
So what Norbiton Industrial Area is like now.
And that will be quite short because essentially it would just be something saying.
You know, currently the industrial areas to the east of the town is accessed by one road along the south, which has one exit to a roundabout around which.
There are three buildings, three factories.
Three factories and there is one eastern exit or one exit to the east, along which is five more factories.
Done.
And then I think in the second paragraph I might sort of then start by coming from the town again and say you know in the future, the area is still accessed.
From the town, but, and then I would start to introduce the changes.
So I guess the first change yeah is.
So I always like thinking it's quite nice if you do things in the same way.
So now, as you just said, to access, there's now an extra roundabout, isn't there?
Mm-hmm.
You could even say like, which could help with the flow of traffic, or help with the flow of increased traffic, for example.
Yeah.
And then you know, in terms of the factories, you can just say, you know the original roundabout remains, but all of the factories have been removed.
Yeah.
And replaced instead by shops and a medical center.
Mm-hmm.
And two new, do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
Two new sets of housing to a new exit to the west.
Mm-hmm.
And then to the east it remains.
So just literally go around.
Mm-hmm.
And then maybe say, you know, at the end, then talk about maybe using your language.
Like the most significant development is a new road to the north, which goes across the river.
I would think you've got to mention that bridge.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Into a new greenfield development site on the old farmland and do it that way.
But I just wonder if sort of doing it in terms of like coming in the roundabout is the same, but it's got two no, has it got yeah, two new exits.
One to the west and one to the north.
Each, yeah, maybe that would be a good way of saying it.
Two new exits, each which leads to more housing and to the east.
And then just mention the school.
Do you think?
No, I think that's good.
Actually, I think yeah, you have a short paragraph which describes what it's like now.
Yeah, and I would mention the farmland in that as well.
Yeah, I think you're right, I didn't do that.
I think you should.
Yeah, and the river as well maybe, like there's a river to the north, farmland on the other side.
And then yeah, as you go through the changes, you're going to structure the paragraph in the same way and comment on each change and how it's changed.
Because then you're making comparisons as well, aren't you?
So exactly.
Now you're right.
I should have mentioned the river and the farmland in the first paragraph.
I think that's right, Nick.
But I think that's the key thing is that the first paragraph will be quite short.
And, you know, for other maps, that could be a complete disaster.
You don't want to say, you know, this is the place now and this is the place in the future.
If everything changes, because otherwise it's too confusing.
But because the river's the same, the road out is the same, the roundabout is the same, we've still got the east access.
I think so much is the same.
That you could do it like that, definitely, couldn't you? yeah that it's just easier to say that's all that all remains but the factories are gone there's a couple of new roads yeah and do it that way good never thought of it like that that's a good idea actually Yeah, that's the funny thing about maps is I think the language is relatively easy.
If you studied, there's only what 10 verbs or 15 verbs you need to know really to be able to write great map reports.
But I do think sometimes you know, if you did this as the East and the West, They're by far the hardest to analyze.
I think sometimes
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know what you do.
You'd be splitting the roundabout in the middle, wouldn't you?
Yeah, it doesn't work east and west on this one at all.
It doesn't make any sense.
And unfortunately, there's not enough north of the river to do north and south.
If half of it was north, you might be able to do that.
But yeah.
So that to me...
I think if a student was able to understand that was the easiest way of doing it.
The actual writing shouldn't be that difficult.
Yeah.
But what was it again?
Brown what?
Brownfield site.
Brownfield site, Greenfield site.
Right.
Whoever writes that in their report gets a nine.
You've got Mr. Nick Lone.
Thanks for that one.
All right.
So, before we move on then, on a level of difficulty, where would we place that one?
It's pretty hard.
I mean, compared to a typical map, it's pretty hard.
Um yeah, but i think once you have, once you get that what we've just talked about, with the sort of way to do it, it's not very difficult.
No, if anything, I think what's kind of strange about that map is that the key features are not difficult to find.
But describing the chart, if you don't organise it in that way, which we just did, I think it could all get a little bit.
Confusing.
Yeah.
And, you know, the one piece of advice I would give for maps is, you know, a person who cannot see the map must be able to sort of visualize or follow what you're saying.
So if you're just sort of always saying the houses were replaced by this and this was replaced by that, it can become a little bit difficult to actually visualize, which is why Start from one place and do the same description in the same way from start to finish definitely helps.
All right, let's move on then to the second chart, Nick.
Do you want to read the introduction for this one?
The table and charts below give information on the police budget for 2017 and 2018.
Right.
Great.
So this is what I would call a double trouble chart.
Double trouble.
We've got two different types of charts here.
However, both are very small, as in they do not contain very many pieces of information.
In our police budget, which is a table, we've got four sources.
So that's four sources for two years.
That's only eight pieces of information.
And in our pie charts, we've only got three bits of information.
They don't have a wide amount of spending, do they, the police?
So really, in total, you've only got, what's that, 14 pieces?
And specific bits of statistics, which compared to some charts is quite small, isn't it?
Yeah.
So we do have a very long title for this one, though.
Well, you're going to have a big introduction.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I would try to write your introduction as one sentence if you can.
So there will be a larger... Yeah, sort of a relatively long introduction.
Whenever you've got a double trouble chart.
So if you've got any combination of different, you know two i don't even say two charts, because you might have two pie charts that show the same thing, but if you've got, you know two sets of charts which are showing different things.
Yeah, it's really important in the overview that you have a key feature for each set of charts, definitely.
So this is why I think it's kind of almost too simple, right.
So if you look at the table, Nick, we've got four sources and we've got two years.
So whenever you've got two years, you definitely want to.
You know, the first thing you want to focus on is what changed.
And we haven't, we've got three sources in a total.
Yeah.
There's even less information then, really.
So if we have a look at what increased, you know, you should...
Use little arrows to have a look on your paper.
I mean, what have we got there?
Well, I think I'd probably say something like overall, the total revenue increased for the police over the period, with the majority of the increase coming from local taxes.
Right.
And I think you've done the right thing there, Nick.
Because the absolute easiest overview would just be overall revenue from all three sources increased.
You could say that.
Yeah.
But if you're aiming for a seven or higher, that is probably... A bit too simplistic, isn't it?
It's a bit too simplistic.
So I think what Nick has done is exactly what I think you should do is can you tell us which you know with the largest increase coming from local taxes?
Brilliant.
Done.
I mean, I think that's all you can really... I mean, there's nothing else to say there, is there?
If we have a look at the pie charts then, now again, these are kind of relatively simple.
I mean, I guess with any pie chart, my advice would always be it doesn't matter what they show, just have a look at the shapes of the things that we're shown, right?
So if you look at the shape of the two...
You know, are they drastically different?
Very, very similar to most.
They're very similar, right?
So I mean in terms of then how the money was spent.
I would say the spending patterns were relatively similar in both years.
But technology had a bigger increase or something like that.
Yeah, definitely.
So, I mean, I would probably want to mention the fact that salaries were definitely the highest.
Yes.
So you know, spending was relatively similar in both years, with the majority being spent on salaries, although technology was the only area that showed an increase or something.
Yeah.
So that's quite a lot of information for that chart.
But I mean, if you wanted to do it really simply, I guess you know, as I said, for the table you probably want to look at increases or decreases.
The problem is that you've got one increase, one decrease, and one remain stable chart.
So it's kind of hard to describe that as a general trend.
But whenever you've got a pie chart, that's probably indicating that they're looking at sort of like the most or the least.
So that might be another way of looking at that.
So, you know, just saying salaries...
Got the most.
Or maybe we could do it like that.
Salaries got by far, you know, salaries received by far the highest percentage of the money.
But technology saw the only increase despite having the lowest allocation or something.
Mm hmm.
I actually think it is as simple as that.
I mean, and again I do want to sort of say to people don't get overwhelmed by thinking oh, I've got to really find there must be something really complicated happening here.
If you literally just said, the police receive more money, in particular from local taxes.
But the majority was spent in both time periods on salaries.
Mm-hmm, that would be fine right, if you can add.
You know that there's a similar pattern of spending and that it was the lowest.
That's all great, but you know really what's important is that what you're saying is accurate, it's clear and it's concise.
Yes, And then you move on to the specific details.
And I guess Nick for the specific details.
I mean, there's not really.
I mean I think you're just going to run through everything.
You'll probably talk about the table in paragraph one.
So overall, you would say revenue increased by what is it?
139 million, with the majority of that coming from an increase in local taxes.
And then you would write the number.
National government also increased the amount of money spent on police by...
£2.3 million.
The smallest increase however, came from other sources, for example grants, which increased by £500000.
Yeah, exactly.
And the only thing, I think that's brilliant.
The only thing I might add into that was that national government was the biggest contributor in both years.
Yeah, and the other sources were the lowest.
As well as talking about the change, you could talk about what was the highest and what was the lowest.
Mm-hmm.
But that's it, isn't it?
Mm-hmm.
I mean, and then again for how the money was spent.
Like you just said, start with the salaries, because that's the highest.
Mm-hmm.
So that should probably go first.
So a full...
The only thing I would say for any pie chart.
I mean, when I'm looking at this, there's one number that stands out to me Nick.
Do you know what that might be?
17%?
Because it's the same?
Oh, because it's the same.
No, I was thinking more.
75, because if you've got a pie chart, It took up three quarters of the budget.
You might want to try and use a fraction.
Yeah.
So I might sort of say, you know, in 2017, three quarters of the budget... was spent on salaries.
But this had fallen.
Now, it's annoying that it's not 66%, which is two thirds.
Yeah.
But you could probably say, because I do think you want to combine the same.
It's a bit weird to put a fraction and then say 69%.
You might want to say exactly three quarters was allocated to salaries in 2017, but this had fallen to just over two-thirds in 2018.
Yeah, you could actually that would be good.
Yeah yeah, and then it's done like that, and so really, in terms of difficulty, i think this is about as easy as it gets.
Yeah, it is.
I mean, yeah, for sure.
Tables and pie charts are not always the easiest ones to do.
And you've got two very simple ones here.
The difficulty comes from talking about both of them, I guess.
And having a good clear overview.
Having a good clear overview.
That picks out the key information from both.
Yeah.
And maybe also having...
Having the ability from a simple chart to create a range of different sentences, right?
Because a weaker student would just probably say, you know, increase from two, rose from two.
They might use different verbs, but only a good student is going to be able to create a nice range of different sentence structures from two relatively simple material.
I think yeah, but if you are just starting report writing and would like to um Yeah, and would like a relatively simple chart to start from, I think that is about it.
I think that's about as easy as it gets, really.
Because there's not even a way of linking the two charts, is there?
Not really.
So you know, if you've just done that one, you're probably thinking this report writing is pretty easy.
And then you get on to question number three.
So Nick, have a little read of the introduction to this one.
I think I've seen this one before somewhere.
But it says.
The chart below gives information about how families in one country spent their weekly income in 1968 and 2018.
So what we can see here is we've got how many?
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
So we've got eight different sectors, I guess, where families spent their money.
So we've got food, housing, fuel, clothing, household goods, personal goods, transport and leisure.
So as this is a change chart, I guess the first thing we want to focus on is the change.
Right.
So what I would be hoping for as a student is, as I put my little arrows, like what increased in spending and what decreased in spending, the ideal thing to find would be
Everything increased with the exception of one thing, right?
Or everything decreased with the exception of one thing.
Is that what we can see here, Nick?
No, we've got a mixed trend here.
Complete mix, right?
Food fell, housing grew fuel fell, clothing fell, etc etc.
Which is fine, right.
That can happen, and when that does happen, what i would then encourage students to do would be to have a look at the things which people spent more on in 2018 compared to 1968 and the things that they spent less on now.
Actually, this is very, very similar to a chart which is in A book called Instant IELTS.
And was actually the.
This was the chart I always used to use with students in the very first lesson for report writing.
Because in that one, when you had to look at what I know, that wasn't about households, it was about student spending.
Right.
When you had a look at the student spending.
What they spent less on was stuff like accommodation, food and books.
And what they spent more on was stuff like entertainment, non-essential travel and alcohol, right?
So if you looked at those three things, if you're like well, what do the things that increase have in common and what do they have that decreases?
Yeah.
It was essentially like they spent less on essential goods and more on non-essential goods.
Yeah.
Right?
So there was a really clear distinction.
If we look at the things, even from the first two items here Nick No, there's.
Housing is essential, food is essential, but they're spending less on food and more on housing.
Yeah.
So immediately that doesn't work.
Now...
I always think that there are procedures you can use to find the key features, right?
So like things, and this is what I would do.
I do those arrows.
I'd like look at what increased and what decreased to find a connection.
But I also think there are times when you have to abandon.
What usually works?
Because I just think for here, I mean, can you see a pattern?
No, I don't think there's a clear one, to be honest.
No.
I don't think there is either.
So if there's not a pattern, what you might do is you might sort of say well, are they kind of spending similar amounts on most things?
Mm-hmm.
And then maybe there's one or two which have seen huge changes.
I mean, is that true for this?
Kind of, I guess.
I mean you've got fuel and power, clothing and footwear.
To an extent household goods, personal goods, maybe transport, are fairly similar.
Yeah.
But I mean, even with clothing and footwear and transport, there's still quite a big change actually.
Yeah, there is.
Yeah.
I think there is.
So I think you might just be, and remember, we've got 20 minutes to write this report, right?
Although the key features are important, the examiners also are not told the key features.
Yeah.
And for this sort of chart, they would be struggling as much as you are.
So I think you know, if the worst comes to the worst and this is what I want to talk about it's better to have something and to finish on time than to keep looking and looking and looking, when there might not actually be anything there.
So once, if you're not sure...
You know, the easiest thing to ever look for is highest and lowest.
So you know, in 1968 definitely most money was, Or the highest percentage was, spent on food, wasn't it?
Definitely, yeah.
And then in 2018, most is spent on... Leisure.
Leisure, right?
So...
You might literally just want to come up with something as simple as that as one of your key features, right?
Now a bit like we said before Nick, what you did for the table, you might want to talk about the biggest changes as well.
So we could say something like well, the majority, or by far the most, or by far the highest percentage was spent on food in 1968.
This saw the biggest change. in pattern of spending.
Or do you know what I mean?
Or this showed the biggest decrease.
Whereas in 2018, most were spent on leisure, which I think saw the biggest increase actually.
Yeah.
Boom.
I mean, that could be it.
It's not great because it's not summarizing everything, but you could then honestly just say most of the other sectors saw fairly similar amounts of spending, with the exception of housing and transport.
Maybe you could yeah, and then you mentioned all of them, haven't you?
Yeah, i mean it's just, i think this is a really unfair chart, because if you do good practice, you can't really use it here, can you?
No, nothing works.
I mean, are you seeing anything that I missed this afternoon with my cup of tea?
It's a bit confusing, but I think you're right.
I think if you talk about the biggest in 68 and then in 18, and then ironically they're the two biggest changes as well.
And then in the final sentence you can mention that yeah, in the other areas there were some which showed some change.
Yeah.
But the majority stayed relatively similar.
Yeah.
Or something like that.
For the main, they were all fairly similar with the exception of housing and transport.
Yeah.
Maybe.
I just think...
The only other thing I thought of was that I don't know if this works, though was something that if you actually look at 1968 just the black lines there's a huge difference.
Like food is by far- It's way more expensive than anything else.
But then everything else is actually fairly similar.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Doesn't it?
All those black lines are sort of all under 10%.
Whereas now it's like a more even spread, if you know what I mean, between That could be another one.
So while, you know, food predominated spending in 1968, in 2018, there was a more even spread.
Mm-hmm.
Of distribution of income between the eight areas.
But I am struggling, right?
So if you were struggling, go for the easiest thing.
The easiest thing is always the highest and the lowest, but you've got to do something about change.
And, as you said, it's just lucky that food saw the biggest decrease and leisure saw the biggest increase.
So that is actually including some kind of change in our overview.
In terms then Nick, of how we're going to divide these items into two paragraphs.
What is your instinct telling you?
Probably I will focus in paragraph one on the four most expensive things in 2018.
So the things which took up the most.
Yeah.
So that would be leisure, housing, food and transport in that order.
And I would also mention again that leisure and food had the biggest change.
And then in paragraph two, I would talk about, first of all, household goods because it's the same.
Yeah.
And then I would talk about them in order of expense.
So clothing and footwear and then fuel and power and personal goods at the end, probably.
Right.
So you're going to focus on the sort of...
You're going to focus on 2018 basically, as in what took up the most in 2018 and what was the least.
That is definitely one approach.
I don't, I mean, like for all charts, there's not always a right way and a wrong way of doing it.
I think that is a great way of doing it.
I think the key thing is to have some solid logic.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I mean, you could put um what, how many things.
So food fell, clothing and footwear fell, personal goods fell and household goods stayed the same.
So you could do that in one paragraph, couldn't you?
You could do all that in one.
You can sort of say 1968 blah blah, blah.
Food was the you know most, but family spent the most on food.
But this had fallen, This had halved actually.
You could use there almost.
It had halved.
Yeah, it's halved.
So you could do, you know, next was... So you could do it that way.
Definitely.
Yeah, in terms of what fell from 1968 and then what increased or what people spent more on.
Again, you've just got a lot of information here.
Mm-hmm.
There's not a huge pattern.
Honestly, the key thing ironically, not the key feature is that you get something down and you get it finished.
You're going to have to mention all of the items.
You're going to have to have four of them in the first paragraph and four in the second.
How you do it is not really that important.
And this is what I'm wondering if this is the.
The trend that I'm seeing from IELTS is that they either give you something that's super simple or so difficult that actually all that matters is your ability to write good sentences.
Yeah.
You know, so it's about how are you able to take all this information?
You know it would be good to draw comparisons, and So I think that's where your one works Nick, because you could talk about.
You know, similar amounts were spent in 2018 on leisure housing and food.
Do you know what I mean?
So you could put those three together, although they were very different in 1968, or?
Yeah interesting, i think i'm going to set this one nick for a few students this week to see how they get on with this.
Sometimes when i get students answers back, that helps me understand what is the best approach.
Yeah sure um, But yeah, I do think maybe higher amounts because, like you said, things that people spent a lot on in the first paragraph and then lesser spendings in the second.
And that second paragraph will be much shorter, I think.
Yeah, for sure.
There's a bit less to say here, isn't there?
Yeah.
Cool.
What do we think about difficulty of that one?
Oh, that's a tough one.
It is tough, isn't it?
That's a good 8 or 9, I think, out of 10.
That one yeah, because there's a lot of information and you could just spend all day looking at it, bit like those.
You know those pictures that when I was a kid, when it just looked like dots and then you relaxed your eyes and a dolphin appeared or something.
Keep looking for the dolphin to appear and it doesn't.
So yeah, if you've been confused by that one, I understand.
But Nick, just when you thought it was time for us to go and eat our dinner, have a look at this one from test four.
Oh.
Now, you really can think about this.
So maybe read the introduction and then we'll probably pause the recording.
All right.
The graph below shows the number of shops that closed and the number of new shops that opened in one country between 2011 and 2018.
Hmm.
What happened in 2015?
Right, exactly.
Nothing closed.
Impossibly.
So what we'd usually want to do, wouldn't we, for a line graph, again, is they're all about changes.
What increased and what decreased.
This is kind of similar, though, to the line graph we had, which we discussed earlier.
I don't know last year which was.
I think it's the line graph which shows how many visitors stayed on an island.
Oh, the island, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And a cruise ship and the total.
Now, that was a bit different because it had a total.
So I was thinking well, this is kind of similar to that, maybe because you've got openings and closings.
But...
I mean, if you're looking here, wouldn't it be lovely, if I don't know?
The number of shops that closed went down throughout the period and the number of shops that opened went up.
Or if they were the same?
I mean, do we have any clear increases or decreases on this chart, Nick?
Well, I think overall, the number of closures is definitely higher.
It's consistently higher except in 2015 and 2011.
Right.
So that is definitely true.
Right.
So closures is definitely higher.
But both of them actually, the trend is negative for both of them.
Because they both end much lower than they began.
So they end much lower.
Right, exactly.
So from the start to the end, they end much lower.
But what I do think is kind of important for this chart is that... The relationship between them.
Well, it's the relationship between them I think is important.
And also, you know, and I use a particular chart on my course for my students.
And they often come a cropper, Nick, which means that they fail or they get tripped up.
Yeah, because...
We focus a lot in the course on increases decreases increases, decreases.
What's increasing, what's decreasing?
But sometimes I think now I also not always using increase, decrease, but fluctuating.
And stable.
And I think for this chart... Yeah.
The closures and openings both fluctuate, don't they?
They do.
But actually, they do fluctuate in rather similar ways, don't they?
Yeah, that's true.
So they both decrease in the first year... Then increase...
And then they kind of increase.
Then they both decrease to 2015.
And then, okay, that one stays stable.
And then at the end, they're more sort of like relatively... Stable.
Stable.
So, I mean, I think what you said is great.
Closures were... Sorry, what is it?
There were more...
Generally, there were more closures every year than openings, except for two years.
Brilliant.
So you could say you know yeah, the number of closures was higher than openings in every year except 2011 and 2015.
Usually exceptions are one year, but for this chart...
As I said before, who cares?
You've just got to get something down, haven't you?
I think that I mean, I think if you were quite good, you might want to say something.
Like you know, it's clear that closures and openings both fluctuated, although both saw similar patterns in most years, despite closures, wider variations or something.
Yeah yeah, I mean, I do think it's really difficult because I kept thinking is there again?
I am looking for the dolphin right.
Is it obvious that there are more openings than closures over the whole period?
Not really, because it's kind of confusing.
Do you know what I mean?
Like Closures is higher, but then in that 2015, nothing shut.
It's a huge dip, so it's hard to understand.
Yeah.
I mean, you might also want to say, yeah, they had very similar patterns.
You might again say you know, with most openings happening in in 2011 and few or and fewest closings happening, closures happening in 2015.
So you could do the most and the fewest here.
I thought while most shops opened in 2011, fewest closed in 2015.
As a little comparison.
But again, I don't see anything really obvious here that you know, apart from highest, lowest and, as you said, closures.
You know which year has got the highest and lowest of each and that closures were higher in general yeah.
In terms of an organization.
When we've got a traditional line graph which has got five, six different lines on it, we would probably group them in terms of the increases or the decreases right.
So you might put you know three countries that saw petrol prices increasing in paragraph in the first paragraph, and then three that saw them decrease in the second paragraph.
I mean, we've only got two things here.
So would we want to put I don't know openings in the first paragraph and closings in the second paragraph.
I think I probably would do it like that.
Would you?
I probably would.
And I'd probably try to, I mean, you don't want to be going through each year individually, I think.
Oh, but I don't know what else.
I just think if you do that, you're going to struggle to make comparisons maybe.
That's the thing, isn't it?
Yeah.
That is the thing.
So if you did them together I don't know it might look something like in 2011, there were more shops opened than closed.
So like, what's that?
Eight and a half thousand people.
Compared to roughly 6,500.
However, the next year, both fell, although... Opening significantly more or something like that.
Yeah, fell more steeply to roughly 4,000, whereas fell to 5,000.
And then, where you could then not do every year is maybe from 2012 to 2014.
Mm-hmm.
You could say, however, while openings grew steadily to 6,000 in 2014, closures rose to a peak.
I guess that is a peak actually.
Yeah, it is the highest point, isn't it?
Yeah, of 7,000 before falling to the same mark.
So you could do it a little bit like that.
That sounds like a good way actually to do it.
I was just worried if you went through every year, you'd have way too much information.
Yeah.
I mean, I think for the first bit, I mean, I probably finished the first paragraph in 2015.
Yeah.
And say, however, in the next year... I would end it in 2014.
Would you?
And then I would do the 2015 as the beginning of the next paragraph.
And then I'd probably do the same again and group 16 to 18 and say there wasn't much change.
That's what I was going to say.
It was a small dip in 2017 for closures and there was another sort of mini peak in 2017 of openings, but it fell to the final year and openings was, or closures remained, higher over the period.
Yeah, I think that is it.
I think actually a lot of the work happens from 2011 to 2015.
And then the final three years.
I think you could do in a couple like I mean literally one sentence or two sentences.
Because then, you know, they remain relative while, you know, what was it?
Closures remained almost the same or, despite a minor dip fluctuations, stayed the same and then fell.
Yeah.
So I think if you do them together...
So it's like, you're going to have to then use language like experienced a sharper fall.
So it's a lot of comparing, isn't it?
Or, yeah.
Or, you know, rose more, reached the same level.
Yeah.
Now, interestingly here, because as a teacher you know, I've been teaching students for years to use the word overtake.
In English, In 2012, openings fall below closures.
So closures overtake.
The number of closures overtook the number of openings.
Yeah, but I don't even know if that is overtaking, is it?
Is it undertaking?
Can you use overtake?
I would say you could use overtake for that one.
Do you think?
But it sounds funny because it's only the second year.
And both are falling.
So it feels weird to say something's overtaking when they're both... No, you're right, actually.
Falling.
But again, I don't know.
If I don't know, how are the students going to know?
So I do think for this one, the key features are kind of tricky.
Because, I mean, even if you just said okay, let's do the easiest one possible closures and openings.
Both saw wide fluctuations, with most openings happening in 2011 and most closures happening, we could say, in 2013.
So you've got fluctuations, which has changed?
You've got the most of each.
That is the as simple as it gets, isn't it?
Yeah um, If you want to get much more complicated, you might want to say Both saw similar patterns of change.
Could do, yeah.
Both saw similar patterns of fluctuating change.
Yeah.
With most openings happening in 2011 and fewer closures in 2015.
I like the most and the fewer there.
Very tricky.
Yeah.
But Nick, it's not easy that, is it?
That's going to be a 10 in terms of difficulty for me.
I think it is definitely for me as well.
But I do think if you for this one.
For some line graphs, you don't want to be describing.
If you've got you know six items, you don't want to be doing them all at the you know all for the first half.
No, you want to separate them as you can listen back to our old episode.
But for this one, as we just got the two items, I think you've got to do them together, as it's the only way to make comparisons.
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
Hands up if you're tired.
Yeah, definite wide mix there of flowcharts.
No flowcharts yeah, and there's a couple of flowcharts in book 16, weren't there, um?
But I just don't think I've ever seen such a big difference between test two, the nice little table, the nice couple of pie charts, and then test three and test four, the bar chart.
Yeah, really difficult.
So if you have tried these before, you might want to go back and have a look at them again, based on what Nick and I, or the advice that we've given today.
I do think increasingly, getting a good score about reports is just understanding.
What is your approach going to be?
What are you going to put in the first specific details paragraph?
What are you going to put in the second?
And once you've got that.
I think it becomes a lot easier.
Not a lot, but a little bit easier.
Right, good.
OK, well, thank you very much for joining us today.
I hope all of that made sense.
It was not an easy lesson, so well done if you've made it that far.
And a reward will be a much easier and useful lesson next week about paragraph writing, how to use details in your examples or details in your sentences, extensions of your arguments, something that chat gpt couldn't do.
No exactly, well remembered, nick.
All right.
All right, we'll take care until next week bye-bye.
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