IELTS Bar Chart Video Transcript

Hello let’s have a look at how to

write a report and describe an IELTS bar chart

for writing task 1 now this is the bar
chart we’re going to look at today

and you can see the description of the
chart

over here IELTS will always give you a
description

and you need to read it very carefully
because

it contains all the information you need
to know

about the chart so let’s have a look

the graph shows the number of boys and
girls

and you can see here boys are in blue
and girls are in red

playing sport

now you can see that the number is on

the vertical axis here at the side

and all the sports are at the bottom

on the horizontal axis so we’ve got

6 different sports and this

is an English town in 2012

and the date shows us that this report

must be in the past tense

so always check the date

on your chart to see if you need to
write the past tense

the future tense or

if there is no date then use the present
tense

now there are four paragraphs

that you need to write for your IELTS
writing task 1

these paragraphs are very important

it is the method of organizing

the information your organization

is 25% of

your marks for IELTS writing task 1
organization and linkers

together

25% so four paragraphs

the first paragraph is the introduction
now what information

do we need there nice and simple we need
to put

this description this information

into the introduction but

can you copy no

any language that is not your language

will not contribute towards your IELTS
band score

so that means the examiner it does not
take language

that you copied from up the chart so you
need to

basically paraphrase

and that meas to write
the description again using your own

words so paraphrase the

description let me give you an
example

if we want to paraphrase the first two
words

the graph well we could change that
because we could say the

the bar chart that is more accurate

so the bar chart here we have a verb

they say shows and we can say

illustrates so the bar chart

illustrates they say the number

of boys and girls so the number we can
change that

the amount boys and girls

now be very careful boys and girls are
not

men and women men and women are adults boys
and girls are children so be careful

with your paraphrase

the best thing you can do is to say
children

divided by gender so divided by males or
females

so the bar chart illustrates

the amount of children divided

by gender playing and have they say
playing sport

now we could change that and say the number

of children the amount to children
divided

by gender who played

so now we’ve got a clause who played

and here they say sport we can say who
played

tennis badminton cycling swimming

football and hockey is it’s OK to list

six sports in the introduction yes

in fact it is, it’s a very good idea to

introduce all the sports and you could
say

who played six sports in brackets

tennis badminton cycling swimming
football

and hockey and here we can say

in an English town or in at town

in England in 2012

don’t change the date so here is

the introduction I’ve just said

so it take a little read of it and
you’ll see the information there

right so that’s the introduction all we’re
doing

is writing the same information but

using our own language

then next very important paragraph

is your overview and the overview

is a paragraph that contains

the key features of the graph

so this is all about highlighting

now is this important yes it is

if you do not have a clear overview
if you don’t have an overview

that is by a score of 5 for one of the
criteria

task achievement so no clear

overview band score 5 an overview

band score 6 a clear overview

band score 7 so you can see it that when

you have a good overview your band score
starts going up

so the key features let have a little
look at this bar chart

what key features can we see well
let’s have a look at boys first

boys are the blue and we can see here

the most popular sport for boys

was football how about for girls

we can see here the majority of girls

prefered swimming so

immediately those are key features

and highlights what else can we see
about the chart

well if you look at all the blue

and then you look at all the red

which one plays the most sport

where you can see that in this chart

boys played more sports than

girls overall

so that is something that you put in the
overview

so the overview your key features

what’s most popular for boys what was
most popular for girls

and boys played more sport

than girls now you can see there are
no numbers

there are no dates it’s just the key
features

highlighted now we come to the body
paragraph

and the body paragraph basically I’ll
put here

this is where you need to write

all the detail of this chart

and the detail must contain the numbers

so for example how many boys played tennis

how many girls played tennis

but we need to organize this information
into logical

paragraphs so let see how we can
organize it

looking at tennis boys played more tennis

than girls check badminton

and we’ll see it’s the opposite girls played more
than boys

so boys played less cycling

boys did more cycling than girls

but boys swam less than girls

boys played more football and also more
hockey

so you can see here that in four sports

boys were more active than girls

and in two of them them badminton and
swimming

girls participated more than boys

and that is how we can organized

our body paragraphs so for

body paragraph A I would have

football first

because that was the most significant

then I would have tennis

after that I would then have

cycling and then hockey

so I’ve got 4 sports that I’m going to

explain and give detail about

in paragraph A for the body

and paragraph B of course I’m gonna
have the girls

and swimming I will put first

and then I would put badminton

so but is how you organize it and

when you come to writing body
paragraph

A you should give sentence

for each sport comparing

girls and boys playing that sport

let me give you an example football

while the number of boys who played
football

was 60, (comma)

the number of girls was only 20

if we move on to tennis we can write

with regards to tennis, the number boys

playing tennis was 50

whereas about 35

girls played tennis

so all you need to do is give a nice long
sentence

comparing boys and girls for each sport

and put the data the numbers

in the sentence now why

are numbers important well let me explain

again the examiner will check for the
numbers

in the body paragraph you must have
numbers

to support your detail

in the sentences band score 5

there are no numbers

no data to support the sentence

band score 6 you have numbers

with the description in

the body paragraphs so you can see

that when you do not put your numbers
then your band score will go down

band score 5 when you put the numbers then

your band score will go up 6, 7 and 8

so that is very important for your
writing task 1

well that’s all for this lesson again if
you want some more lessons

and you want more tips just follow me
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and if you would like to see the model
for this bar chart

to see a model band score 9 report

then please just click here and you
will see it

that’s all for this lesson I’ll see you
again in another

IELTS lesson