The 4 Main Types of Questions

In this video we’re going to look at the different types of questions that you’re going to see on the

writing task one essay.

Let’s get started.

So essentially there are four main types of questions that you’re going to see.

Let’s see what those are.

The first type is going to be a trend question in this type of question.

You’re going to have data that is plotted over a period of time so you may have a pie chart a line graph

or a bar graph or some other type of info graphic for this type of question.

You just have to describe the changes that you’re seeing over a period of time the next type of question

is a comparative question in this type of question.

You just have to compare data between two different graphs or two different charts or two different

sets

the next type of question you may see is a process question in this type of question you’ll be given

a diagram and you will have a process which is shown in a number of steps or stages the last type of

question that you can get is a map question in which you’re going to be given a before version and an

after version of a map and you just have to describe the differences or the changes that you see in

the two maps.

All right.

So those are the four main types of questions.

Let us now take a deeper look into what each of these questions look like.

Let’s look at some examples.

So we’ll start off with trend graphs.

So here’s an example in which we have a line crop as you can see we have data that is plotted over a

period of time.

In this case we have data that is plotted from the year 1980 to 2030.

Another example is a bar graph.

Again we have data that is plotted over a period of time.

In this case we have data that is plotted over the years 1995 to 2002.

Another example is a table.

Here again you have changes that are happening over a period of time.

In this case we have data from the years 1999 and 2004.

So again we have changes that are plotted over a period of time.

You can also get a pie chart again.

Notice that we have the year 2000 and the year 2050.

And so we have changes that are expected to happen in this chart.

So this is also a trend graph let us now look at a different type of graph which are the comparative

graphs.

Let’s see what they look like so we have a bar graph here unlike the trend graph in which we have data

plotted over a period of time.

In this case we don’t have data plotted over a period of time.

Instead we just have data from one single year.

In this case only the year 2010.

So this is just a static snapshot of a data set.

Okay.

So we don’t have changes being described over a period of time.

Instead what we have are different data sets for two different countries for France and the U.K.

Let’s

look at another example.

Here we have a table again.

We only have a static snapshot of one single year.

No changes are happening here over a period of time.

So here we just have different data sets.

We have data for different countries and then we also have data for different products.

All right.

You can also have a pie chart for a comparative graph here.

You have to compare the data sets that you see between the two different pie charts.

Here we have the household energy use.

But we don’t see any changes that are happening over a period of time.

So that’s how you know that this is a comparative graph.

You have to compare the data let’s look at one last example.

Here we have a mixed chart example.

So you may get questions where you get mixed charts.

What that means is on the one hand you may get a pie chart such as over here and you have to compare

that with a table which is what we have over here.

In other cases you may get questions where you have to compare a table with a line graph or a bar chart

with a pie chart.

All right.

So you can have any kind of combinations.

But the important thing to note here is that you don’t have changes that are plotted over a period of

time.

Instead you just have two different data sets.

And so you just have to compare the two different data sets and highlight the main features so that

concludes the different types of comparative graphs that you can see on your test let’s now look at

some examples of process questions so when it comes to process questions you’re going to get a diagram.

In some cases that diagram may be numbered such as over here.

We have a numbered diagram where each of the stages or the steps of the process are numbered and you’re

just required to describe the process that you see on the other hand.

You may have a process diagram where the diagram is unnumbered so you don’t have clearly laid out steps

or stages but still if you look closer at the diagram you can see that there are stages and steps that

are visible.

So it doesn’t matter if the process diagram is number or not numbered.

All you have to do is describe the process that you see and write a report on it Let us now look at

an example of a map question so here we have a map question in most map questions what you’re going

to get is two different versions of the same map.

Usually you’re going to get a before version of a map and then an after version of a map.

And what you have to do is compare the changes that have happened or the differences that you see between

the two maps so those are all the different types of questions that you can expect to see on the test.

We’ll cover more examples of this in much more detail in the upcoming videos.

So that’s it for this one.

I’ll see you in the next one where we talk about how you can get a high score on your writing task one.

See you there.