IELTS Academic 132 | How to describe a map or plan

In Task 1 of the Academic Writing component of the IELTS exam, you may be asked to describe a map or plan. The diagram will be of a building, street, village, city or town plan that may ask you to contrast the past and present, or the present and future. There will also be a key that explains different locations on the map or a reference to roads and routes. You are expected to write a 150-word description of the information on the map, which will probably include buildings, routes or proposed changes for the future.

Your writing will be scored on four criteria: task achievement, coherence, lexical resources and grammatical accuracy. Let’s review techniques to achieve a good score in all four areas.

Make a plan:
Organise your thoughts before starting. This is critically important. Plan what you will include for each paragraph. A good technique is to explain the area as if you were walking in. So if you had a map of a house, you would start with the doorway or entrance hall. Alternatively, if the map is larger you can start from right to left. Just make sure it’s logical i.e don’t jump from right to left to centre.
TIP: While planning, look for opportunities to group the information, for example; both maps may have an area that is unchanged between the time dates. This can be written up as: Over the fifty year period both maps have maintained a distinct recreational area despite the extensive construction in the surrounding areas.

Task achievement:
Be sure to write at least 150 words that describe all information illustrated in the map or plan. Take about three minutes to understand the map, identify changes and circle the key points. Summarise the main changes or information in the introduction and give more detail in the main part of your text. Give a short summary to sum up the impact of these changes on the town or area.

Coherence
The format of your text should be written in three to four paragraphs: an introduction, main paragraph(s) and conclusion. The use of connectors, such as First of all, In addition to and To summarise, are important to maintain coherence and a logical flow of ideas in your work. Other useful structures would be; opposite, in front of, on the right, to the north, to the south, etc. Maintain separate paragraphs to distinguish changes or comparisons. For example, use your second paragraph to give details of the first map and write about the next map in your third paragraph.

Language
Be sure not to repeat the vocabulary shown on the map, but use your own words for the description. Let’s consider useful vocabulary to describe a map or plan.
In your initial paragraph, you can use verbs such as show, demonstrate or illustrate. For example:
This map illustrates plans to change the green area into a playground for children.
Of course, try to use synonyms to add variety to your use of language. Synonyms of illustrate are highlight, indicate or demonstrate.
= This map highlights a project to transform the green park into a play area for children.

To describe location, employ useful prepositions:
There is a large residential area between the small lake and the park.
A road runs alongside the border of the park.

As we are describing a map or plan, it is essential to use compass points to describe direction. For example:
This plan proposes to build a playground in the south-west part of the park.
The airport is currently located north-east of the town.It will be moved to the west of the park where there is more space.
A lot of other useful vocabulary for maps or plans includes town centre, residential area, roads, routes, railway station and traffic-free zone. Where possible, use synonyms to avoid repetition.

TIP: Comparisons, and superlatives are also valuable points winners!

Grammar
The passive form
The passive form is often used in this type of writing task, as we do not know who is planning these changes. For example:
The park is located west of the village. The playground will be built in the south-west part of the park. A flower garden will be created east of the playground.

Tenses
Use a range of tenses. As you may compare the present with future plans, show your ability to use theses times:
Currently, there is a traffic-free zone in the center of the park. This zone will be expanded to the west area of the park.
In 2014, there was a train station located in the north-east of the region. Currently, this station is now based in south of the village.
When making recent comparisons, it’s useful to employ the present perfect simple:
A new hospital has been constructed in the east of the village.
There have been two new roads built around the border of the town.

Clauses
To achieve a higher score in IELTS Academic Writing Task 1, it’s advisable to use some clauses:
To the south of the river, a new hotel has been constructed.
Greystones, which has a population of 50,000, is situated south of Dublin on the seaside.

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IELTS Academic 131 | How to describe numbers for Task 1

The IELTS Writing Tasks will present you with different challenges to test your skills in writing in English.  Among these challenges are some that will be presented as graphs. Sometimes this will cause us to panic. But actually it is simple to deal with.  All you need to do is look at each of the parts in the given graphs and describe one part at a time.

Here we shall present you with 5 easy ways to begin your descriptions for those parts.

I. The use of a number.

You can begin writing about graphs by describing one part of the graph using a number. Here you can use the actual number given in the chart or you can use the percentage covered by the part you wish to describe.

Let’s look at some examples given the chart below:

Using the actual number or value given:
Ex.
· 200 units of the ice cream sold weekly are blueberry flavored.
· 400 of the ice cream cups sold in the school were vanilla flavored.
· 600 units of chocolate flavoured ice cream were sold.

2. Using percentages:

Ex.
· 50% of all ice cream sold were chocolate flavored.
· 33% of the ice cream sales were the vanilla flavored option.
· 17% of the school’s ice cream cup sales represented those flavored blueberry. Based on this data, the school should order this flavor the least for the following weeks, as it does not seem as popular with students, as the chocolate flavored one.

3. The use of phrases that begin with the article “A”.

You can use phrases that show or present an idea of some amount or portion in discussing charts. Some of the phrases you could use are:
a small number                a huge number                 a minority
a large group                     a small group                    a majority

Let’s look at some examples given the chart below:

You can say:
· A small group shows to have taken interest in studying German, as well as, Spanish.
· A minority is shown to represent those studying German, Spanish and French.
· According to the Eurostat survey a very large number choose to study English. In fact, this number is larger than putting all the other top three languages together.

4. The use of phrases beginning with the preposition “Of”: “Of” can mean “taken from”

One of the ways to begin your essay on a given chart is by using phrases that begin with the preposition “of”.
“Of” in the phrases can be used to mean two different things:
“Of” can mean “taken from”, such as in phrases like:
Of the research made
Of the data gathered
Of the observation made

Let’s look at some examples using the same chart on the Languages Most Studied:

Ex.
· Of the survey conducted by Eurostat in 2015, English is the number one language studied in the world.
· Of the research made, people who studied English, at 94%, far outnumbered those who studied other languages, the next being only 23% which is French.

Let’s look at some examples using the chart on the Ice Cream Sales:

Ex.
· Of the data gathered, chocolate shows as the best-selling flavor in the school.
· Of the totals derived, vanilla shows as the second most popular flavor to the students.

5. The use of phrases beginning with the preposition “Of”: “Of” can mean “out of the”

“Of” can mean “out of the”, such as in phrases like:
Of the participants in the survey
Of the total number of…
Of the initial attendants…

Let’s look at some examples again using the Languages Most Studied chart :

Ex.
· Of the total participants in the survey conducted by Eurostat in 2015, 94% study English.
· Of all the languages in the world, the most popular is English.

Let’s look at some examples using the chart on the Ice Cream Sales:

Ex.
· Of the total number of ice cream cups sold, 400 of them were vanilla.
· Of all the flavors of ice cream sold, chocolate is no doubt the best-seller.

So there you have it, 5 great ways to begin your IELTS Writing Tasks on graphs. You need a little patience, in discussing charts. You don’t need to look at the graph and analyze it immediately, as a whole. You need to look at it in parts first, and use the 5 tips we mentioned here as your guide. Then later, you can move on to discussing the chart as a whole. But again, knowing the tips we gave will not be enough. You will need to practice as often as you can, daily if possible. If you do, you’ll find that these types of Writing Tasks won’t be such a challenge to you anymore.

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