IELTS Writing Task 1 GDC English

How to describe a table

How to organize a report to get high score in Task Achivement & Coherence-Cohesion
Introduction: paraphrase the words of the question, including all information from heading
rows & columns and the names of categories.
Overview: (khả năng đọc bảng biểu) take a look on horizontal lines & vertical lines to
extract the key points (mostly are the trends & differences between categories). If there are
too many key features, be selective! Just pick the 2 – 3 biggest ones!
Now, there are 2 cases with tables.
1st (time mentioned, multiple tables): you’d better analyze the tables for the first year, then
see how they’ve changed in the following years.
2nd (single table): it’s an easy one, just do like the instruction above.
Body 1: Say everything in the first year/period (if time mentioned). OR, choose to state
figures of categories (mentioned in the overview) which offer the smaller number of them.
Body 2: Describe the rest.
(be noticed: pay attention to what the readers/listens are looking for, proofreading is
essential step to make a report perfect).

How to use words & structures to get high score in Lexical Resources & Grammartical
Range and Accuracy
The language used in a table report is basically not different from the one used in Line
Graph & Bar Chart. There’s just a couple of useful words which should be noticed here.
1. Group figures
Because there are lots of numbers and information in a table, we have to shorten them by
grouping the similar ones into a few figures. Let’s see some useful phrases below:
Almost under The coffee used in 5 countries was almost under 100 tons in
1999.
Be/fluctuate between During the 80s, oil prices fluctuated between $20 and $40 a
barrel.
Average 5%, be 5% on The spending on these three items averaged 5% in 2002.
average
Around 5% The expenditure on education of 3 countries was around
5% in 2010.

By Mr. Alex (Phan Anh) 1

IELTS Writing Task 1 GDC English
Practice:
Ex1:

Despite accounting for only 9% of consumer expenditure in Italy, Clothing/Footwear took

the first place among all countries given for the same category. The figures for other
countries on this item ranged from 5.4% to around 6.7%. Leisure/Education placed the least
position among categories, in which Turkey also was the country spending the most , with
just 4.32% recorded, followed by Italy & Sweden with about 3.2% while the rest
accounted for almost under about 2.3%.

By Mr. Alex (Phan Anh) 2

IELTS Writing Task 1 GDC English
Ex2:

By Mr. Alex (Phan Anh) 3

IELTS Writing Task 1 GDC English
Ex3: The table below shows the questionnaire about opinions of club members and general
public for the new theatre in one town in 2012.
Facilities Excellent Satisfied Poor

Club members 72% 26% 2%

General public 64% 24% 8%

Information Excellent Satisfied Poor

Club members 54% 30% 16%

General public 66% 20% 14%

Quality Excellent Satisfied Poor

Club members 88% 10% 2%

General public 53% 40% 7%

By Mr. Alex (Phan Anh) 4