The 60-minute Writing test sets two compulsory tasks, and both are answered in full connected sentences. Task 1 takes at least 150 words in a recommended 20 minutes. Task 2 takes at least 250 words in a recommended 40. One number should govern how you spend that hour, and the ranking pages barely carry it. […]

IELTS vocabulary is the range and precision of the words and fixed phrases you can use, recognise and spell across the four IELTS papers. It is one job in name and four in practice. Writing and Speaking mark it as Lexical Resource, so the word has to come out of you as productive vocabulary. Reading […]

IELTS map vocabulary is the words and fixed phrases you need to describe a place and how it changed: the structures on the map, where they sit, and what happened to them. The map word set splits in two depending on which paper you are sitting. In Listening you have to recognise route language at […]

An IELTS Task 1 map prompt shows a place from above, at two or three dates or once with no dates at all, and asks for a 150-word report in 20 minutes. There are two map question types, not one, and most guides teach only the first. A time-invariant map shows one undated place, and […]

General Training Task 1 gives you a situation, a person to write to and three bullet points, and asks for a letter of at least 150 words in about 20 minutes. Candidates arrive asking how many letter styles exist, and the guides answer two, three or five. The count is the wrong question. What the […]

IELTS Writing Task 1 opens the 60-minute Writing test and asks you to report information in your own words. Which information depends on your paper. IELTS Academic Writing Task 1 gives you a visual; IELTS General Training Writing Task 1 gives you a situation to answer by letter. Both share a 150-word minimum and a […]

IELTS Task 1 vocabulary is a small closed set: the words for what moved, in which direction, by how much and when, plus the language for how big a share something is. Roughly forty items in total. Every guide tells you to alternate a trend verb with its noun to show range. Almost none states […]

The dates on the chart choose your IELTS writing tenses. That is the date rule, and it settles Task 1 before you write a word. Past dates take the past simple, future dates take a future form, and a chart with no dates takes the present simple. No test owner has ever published a tense […]

A job application letter is a General Training Task 1 prompt that gives you a job, a person to write to and three points to cover, and asks for at least 150 words. It is the most predictable letter in the exam, and no page says so. Read enough real prompts and the bullet triad […]

A table prompt gives you raw numbers in rows and columns, and asks for a 150-word report that selects and compares the main features. It punishes you twice, and almost every guide warns about only one. Report too many numbers and you lose marks for getting lost in detail. Leave a category out and you […]

A bar chart prompt gives you quantities as bars and asks for a 150-word report that selects the main features and compares them. The decision that shapes the whole answer is not vocabulary. It is the grouping decision: which bars go in paragraph one and which go in paragraph two. That choice is genuinely open […]

A pie chart prompt shows how a whole divides into parts and asks for a 150-word report that selects and compares the main proportions. The segments add up to one whole, so a rise in one share has to be paid for by a fall somewhere else. That part-to-whole relationship is what licenses proportion language, […]