Task 1 is where the two versions of IELTS Writing diverge completely. Academic candidates describe a chart, map, or process. General Training candidates write a letter. They share a word count, a time allocation, and a marking scheme — and almost nothing else.
It is also the task most candidates under-prepare, on the reasonable-sounding logic that Task 2 carries twice the weight. That logic holds right up until Task 1 is the thing capping the writing band.
What both versions share
- Minimum 150 words. Under-length answers are penalised. There is no upper limit, but 160–190 is the practical range; length past that costs you Task 2 time.
- 20 minutes recommended of the 60-minute paper, leaving 40 for Task 2.
- Four marking criteria, the same ones used for Task 2 with one rename: Task Response becomes Task Achievement. Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy are unchanged — how the writing band scale works covers what each one rewards.
The 20-minute figure is a recommendation, not a rule enforced by the test. Nobody stops you at 20 minutes. That is precisely why it goes wrong: an over-invested Task 1 is one of the most common causes of a rushed, underdeveloped Task 2 worth double the marks.
Academic Task 1: report, do not interpret
You are given visual information and asked to summarise it. The formats that appear are line graphs, bar charts, pie charts, tables, maps showing change over time, and process diagrams.
The instruction asks you to select and report the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Every word there is doing work:
- Select — you are not listing every data point. A chart with forty values does not want forty sentences. Choosing what matters is part of what is being marked.
- Report — describe what is shown, not why it happened. Speculating about causes is the classic Task Achievement error. “Car ownership rose sharply after 1990” is reporting. “Car ownership rose sharply after 1990 because the economy improved” is inventing information that is not in the chart.
- Comparisons where relevant — the highest and lowest, the biggest change, the point where two lines cross, the category that moved against the trend.
A workable structure is an opening sentence that paraphrases what the visual shows, an overview sentence or two giving the big picture, then two paragraphs of specific detail with figures.
The overview is not optional. An answer with accurate detail but no overview statement struggles to move above Band 6 on Task Achievement, because summarising the main features is literally the task. If you write nothing else deliberately, write a sentence that says what the whole chart is doing.
Two more things that quietly cost marks: no personal opinion belongs in Academic Task 1, and for a process diagram there are usually no numbers at all — the task becomes sequencing and passive constructions rather than trend language.
General Training Task 1: get the register right
You are given a situation and asked to write a letter, with three bullet points to cover. The letter falls into one of three registers:
- Formal — to someone you have not met, often an institution or an unnamed official. Dear Sir or Madam, closing Yours faithfully.
- Semi-formal — to a named person in a professional relationship, such as a manager or landlord. Dear Mr Chen, closing Yours sincerely.
- Informal — to a friend or family member. Dear Sam, closing with something natural.
Register is the thing to get right first, because it is not a single word choice — it runs through the whole letter. Contractions, idiom, sentence length, and directness all shift with it. A letter that opens formally and then drifts into chatty phrasing reads as inconsistent and is marked as such.
Cover all three bullet points. This is the most avoidable band loss in the entire task. Each bullet is a requirement, not a suggestion, and an answer that develops two of them beautifully while skipping the third is capped on Task Achievement regardless of how good the English is. Give each bullet its own paragraph and you cannot accidentally lose one.
Beyond that: state your purpose in the first line rather than warming up to it, and give each bullet roughly equal development. A letter that spends a hundred words on the first point and one line on the third is unbalanced even if all three technically appear.
The mistakes that cap the band on both versions
| Mistake | Cost |
|---|---|
| Writing under 150 words | Direct penalty |
| No overview (Academic) | Caps Task Achievement |
| Missing a bullet point (GT) | Caps Task Achievement |
| Explaining causes not shown (Academic) | Task Achievement |
| Inconsistent register (GT) | Task Achievement and Lexical Resource |
| Copying the prompt wording verbatim | Copied text is not credited as your own |
| Overrunning 20 minutes | Damages Task 2, worth double |
That last row is worth repeating, because it is the one that does damage where you cannot see it. Task 1 problems show up in the Task 1 band. Task 1 time problems show up in Task 2.
Practising it properly
Task 1 rewards drilling more than Task 2 does, because the range of what can be asked is narrower. There are a limited number of chart types and a limited number of letter situations, and both reuse the same language patterns — trend verbs and comparison structures on Academic, register and purpose formulas on General Training.
The practical loop is the same one that works for Task 2: write under time, get feedback on which of the four criteria is actually holding the band down, and rewrite that specific thing. Guessing which criterion is weak is the part you cannot do for yourself — the IELTS writing checker scores Task 1 against all four criteria separately, for both Academic charts and General Training letters.
If you are still deciding which version you are sitting, Academic vs General Training covers everything else that changes between them.