Lindsay McMahon
"The English Adventurer"
Jessica Beck
"Director of IELTS Training"

Wondering how you can impress the examiner on IELTS Writing Task 1?

Today we’ll give you three sentence structures that are very high level and will get you the target score that you need for your grammar score in this task.

This is the most important thing to consider when it comes to grammar on the IELTS.

Remember that on Task 1 you will have to write about numbers and you need to show your ability to compare the numbers.

Today you’ll get two different complex structures and a compound structure.

On test day you don’t have to take risks.

Just use these structures and you’ll do fine.

Grammar structures:

  • Structure #1) “As X increases, Y decreases.”- this is higher level because most students don’t use “as.”
    • Sample: “As the population of Taiwan increased to hit 20 million in 2014, the population of Cambodia decreased to hit 500,000.”
  • Structure #2) “In contrast to Y increasing, X actually decreased.”- here if you use “actually” it further emphasizes the contrast. It sounds more high level if you use this word.
    • Sample: In contrast to the population in Taiwan increasing, the population of Cambodia actually decreased at the same time.”
  • Structure #3) “Y increased; however, X decreased”
    • Sample: “The population of Taiwan increased; however, the population of Cambodia decreased.

How can you practice these?

  • Look for graphs in the media. Look at The Economist or The Wall Street Journal and try to apply these sentence structures to what you see. Take a graph about sales, population, politics, the economy, stock prices and write out what you see using these structures.
  • Think about trends in your own life of change. For example, “As I run more miles every day, my weight decreases”

How can you use these structures to comment on trends in your life?

Leave your example in the comments section below!

Let us know your questions in the comments below.

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