IELTS Academic Task 1: Vocabulary for Charts, Graphs and Tables

How Task 1 is marked and what to include

Academic Task 1 is assessed on four criteria: Task Achievement, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Task Achievement rewards an accurate overview and well-selected details. Lexical Resource is where trend and comparison vocabulary earns you marks. A high-scoring response almost always follows the same four-part shape.

• Introduction: one or two sentences paraphrasing what the visual shows, based on the title and axes.
• Overview: two to three sentences describing the most important general trends or biggest differences, with no specific numbers.
• Body paragraph 1: detailed description of one group of data with supporting figures.
• Body paragraph 2: detailed description of the remaining data with supporting figures.

The overview is the single most important paragraph for Task Achievement. It is where you show you can see the big picture. A response without a clear overview cannot reach the higher bands, no matter how good the vocabulary is.

Vocabulary for upward trends

To describe an increase, you can use verbs and their noun forms. Mixing the two lets you vary your sentence structures, which helps your grammar score as well as your vocabulary.

• Sales of electric cars rose steadily from 2015 to 2020.
• There was a sharp increase in unemployment during the same period.
• The population of the city soared, reaching 5 million by 2010.
• Coffee consumption grew gradually throughout the decade.

Vocabulary for downward trends

The same verb and noun pairing works for decreases. Choose the word that matches the size and speed of the change you see, because accuracy of description is part of Task Achievement.

• The number of factory jobs fell sharply after 2008.
• There was a gradual decline in newspaper sales over the period.
• House prices plummeted between 2007 and 2009.
• Attendance dipped slightly in the summer months before recovering.

Adverbs and adjectives for the degree of change

A trend verb on its own is not enough. You need to say how much and how quickly something changed. Pair a verb with an adverb, or a noun with an adjective, to describe the size and speed of the movement precisely.

• Exports increased dramatically in the first three years.
• There was a slight fall in tourist numbers in 2012.
• Profits grew steadily before levelling off after 2018.

Language for stability, peaks and fluctuation

Not all data goes up or down. You will often need to describe values that stay the same, reach a high or low point, or move up and down without a clear direction. These words show range and help your overview capture the whole picture.

• Remained stable / constant / steady: The figure remained stable at around 40 percent throughout the period.
• Levelled off / plateaued: After rising quickly, sales levelled off in 2019.
• Peaked at: Visitor numbers peaked at 2 million in July before declining.
• Reached a low / bottomed out at: Prices bottomed out at 50 dollars in 2015.
• Fluctuated: The exchange rate fluctuated between 1.1 and 1.3 over the year.

Vocabulary for making comparisons

Many Task 1 questions, especially bar charts, pie charts, and tables, are more about comparison than change over time. You need language to show which items are largest, smallest, and how they relate to one another. Comparison structures also raise your grammar score when used accurately.

• Comparatives: Germany produced far more steel than France.
• Superlatives: China had the highest consumption of all the countries shown.
• Multiples: Spending on health was twice as high as spending on defence.
• Fractions and proportions: Nearly a third of respondents chose public transport.
• Similarity: The figures for the UK and Italy were roughly the same.
• Contrast: Whereas exports rose, imports remained flat over the same period.

When you compare, use precise linking words such as whereas, while, compared with, and in contrast. These improve your Coherence and Cohesion score and make the relationships between the data clear to the examiner.

Referring to figures and time accurately

Finally, describe the actual data correctly. Use approximation words when a value is not exact, and vary how you introduce numbers and dates so your writing does not feel repetitive.

• Approximation: around, approximately, just over, just under, roughly, nearly.
• Example: Sales stood at just under 300 units in 2016.
• Time expressions: over the period, between 2000 and 2010, by the end of the decade, during the first quarter.
• Example: By 2020, the figure had reached its highest point of the period.

Remember to use the past tense for data about the past, and always report objectively. Do not explain why a trend happened or add personal opinions, because Task 1 only asks you to describe what the figure shows.