Unit 4 – Writing task 1 – General comment in IELTS Task 1

There is a very important part that is very easy to write in IELTS Writing Task 1 that many people take the exam or ignore, which is the general comment. In the right order, the first task when writing Task 1 is to paraphrase the topic, and before going into describing the details of the drawing, you must write a summary of about 1-2 sentences. You should note that never write more than 2 sentences to summarize, because if you write more, you are writing too specific.

So what do you need to write in the general comment section? Simply what catches your eye first. However, our eyes are not the same. The details you immediately notice may not be seen by others. So, a good rule of thumb for all Task 1 lessons is to: comment on the overall trend and / or order comments.

For this general comment, you should have a sentence template to get started. The most common, easy and effective sentence patterns are:

It is immediately obvious that … = Immediately obvious that …

There are also other spellings such as: It can be seen that …, it is transparent that …, etc. Notice that ways like “I can see” or “we can see” are not mentioned. In Task 1 as well as Task 2, we always try to avoid the use of human pronouns (I, you, we, they, he, she), because these words reduce the formality of the sentence. .

You can also add at the beginning of the phrase:

Looking at the graph / chart / diagram / picture …

In addition to the sentence pattern above, we have a sentence like “Looking at the chart, we have …” quite similar in math. This is an easy-to-remember sentence pattern that every candidate should understand and memorize to make the test smooth and effective.

A. Look in order

With the multi-line graphs or objects as above, ask yourself: which one is the largest or has the highest proportion? So, with the chart above you can write:

Looking at the graph, it is immediately obvious that people in Germany spend the most money on books out of the four countries.

B. Looking at the general trend

For items that have few objects (1-2 subjects) or no clear order, you should comment on the overall trend of all subjects. Although in the picture above, the order of the lines has changed, but in general, the trend of the lines is going up, because the end point is higher than the starting point. You can write:

Looking at the graph, it is immediately obvious that all three countries experience an increase in the number of people aged 65 years and over.

C. General commenting process (Process)

So what about non-numerical articles and trends like Process? For Process threads, you will write a general sentence to group the steps into the main stages: what to start with and what to end with. For example, study the following topic:

The above diagram can be divided into several steps, however, we can divide it into the main stages as follows:

  • Getting started: use limestone and clay to create cement
  • Finish: using cement and other materials to create concrete

After writing the opening sentence: The diagram shows …, we can add the general comment section right behind without having to go to a new sentence:

The diagram shows …, beginning with transforming limestone and clay into cement and finally adding that to a combination of other materials to produce concrete.

D. General comment Maps

Please rely on the peculiarities of maps to comment on it. All maps show the change of a place over the years, and this change usually revolves around the addition and loss of buildings (buildings, roads, …). The map above is a difficult problem of a difficult problem. However, you can see the change of this map taking place in two aspects: the appearance of roads and the appearance of new buildings. If you pay close attention, new buildings only appear after roads are built. So, you can write:

Looking at the picture, it can be seen that more buildings emerge in the village following the construction of different types of roads.