First Ingredient Task Achievement

In this section we’re going to look at the first ingredient that goes into writing a great essay.

We’ll be talking about task achievement.

So first let’s cover some basic information according to the official list of banned descriptors in

order to achieve a band 7 or higher.

You need to do the following things.

First of all you have to make sure that you cover all the task requirements by writing about everything

that the question is asking you next.

You have to make sure that you present a clear overview of the main trends differences or stages that

you see in the infographics and finally you have to make sure that you clearly present and highlight

all the key features of that infographics now in order to correctly present and highlight the key features

of an info graphic.

First you have to know what information is important in the first place for our example over here.

We have a bar graph so let’s take a look at which features are important and should be discussed.

First of all the starting and the ending data points in a graph or a chart are always important.

So you should always talk about the starting and the ending data points in our bar graph.

Example our graph is starting at the year nineteen ninety five and it ends in the year 2000.

So in this case what we can do is discuss the data points that are in the year nineteen ninety five

and also discuss the data points from the year 2002.

Next we have the highest and the lowest points in the infographics.

Now again similar to the starting and ending data points.

These are also very important and if they’re available in your graph or your chart then you should always

write about them.

So let’s see what are the highest and the lowest data points in this graph.

First I want you to take note that we have three different types of calls.

We have the local fixed line called we have the national and international fixed line call.

And finally we have the mobile calls.

So first let’s see what are the highest and the lowest data points for the first call type which is

the local fixed line called

All right.

Here we have the highest data point for the local fixed line call.

And here we have the lowest data points for the local fixed line call next.

Let’s take a look at the highest and lowest data points for national and international fixed line calls

so here we have the highest data point for the national and international calls.

And here we have the lowest data point.

Finally we have the mobile calls.

Here we have the highest data point.

And here we have the lowest data point turning points are also important when you’re describing the

graph or the chart.

In this case we have a turning point over here.

Why.

Because over here the local fixed line calls suddenly change their direction from going upwards to going

downwards.

Therefore this is a turning point.

It’s a point where the direction turns or changes now sometimes you’ll see interesting changes that

may be happening in your graph or your chart.

So what are some interesting changes that are happening in this graph.

Well you may have noticed by now that the local fixed line calls are increasing starting at the year

nineteen ninety five they increase up until the year 1999.

But then suddenly they change the direction and they start going back down.

And what you’ll notice here is that by the end of the graph the local fixed line calls stop at a point

which is exactly the same as where it first started from.

So the starting and the ending data point for the local fixed line calls are exactly the same.

This is an interesting change another interesting change that you’ll notice is that mobile calls undergo

a very fast change.

I mean look at this mobile calls are the least popular out of all three call types.

But by the end of the graph they have grown faster than any other call type.

Finally we have striking differences in this bar graph.

Notice the blue circles what stands out to you.

One thing that stands out to me is that at the beginning of the year local fixed line calls are the

most popular whereas mobile calls are the least popular there’s a huge difference between the two different

call types.

A striking difference let’s look at another example of the striking difference here.

Let’s compare these two data points.

Mobile calls at the year 1995.

And mobile calls of the year 2002.

Notice the significant growth that the mobile call type has gone through over the period of this graph

it’s surprising to see that something that started off so small has grown to be so big.

By the end of the graph this is a striking difference so these are all the features that are important

and should be discussed.

However I want you to take note that if you feel that you’re going over the time limit then you should

only choose the features that are the most important for the writing task one you’re not required to

discuss all the features of a graph all you have to do is describe the most important features.

Now let’s look at another example to better understand which information is important.

Here we have a mixed chart graph.

So what we have here is a pie chart mixed with a table.

So what features are important in this infographics let’s take a look.

So you’ll remember that we said that starting and ending data points are very important.

But guess what.

We don’t have a starting and ending data point in the pie chart or the table so in this info graphic

we won’t be discussing the starting and ending data points because they’re not there.

What we do have however are the highest and the lowest data points the highest data point in the pie

chart is this number here the 35 percent is the biggest number out of all the numbers in this pie chart

and the smallest data point the lowest data point is this one over here seven percent on the other hand.

If you look at the total land degraded in the table what you’ll find is that twenty three percent is

our highest data point and 5 percent is the lowest data point so these highest and lowest data points

in this info graphic are important features that we should be discussing in our essay.

Now what about turning point do you guys see a turning point in this info graphic I actually don’t.

And the reason for that is that this is a comparative graph.

Do you remember the differences between comparative graph and a trend graph in a trend graph.

We have information that is changing over a period of time in a comparative graph.

We don’t have a period of time so because we don’t have changes happening over a period of time.

We also don’t have a turning point.

So in this comparative graph we will not be discussing the turning point because there isn’t one.

What about interesting changes.

Again I want you to pay attention to the word changes.

Changes is something that you will see in graphs or charts where there are changes happening over a

period of time.

So this means that you will see interesting changes in trend graphs not in comparative graphs what you

can have on a comparative graph are striking differences.

So let’s take a look at some examples of striking differences in this info graphic here.

So first of all we can notice that when it comes to deforestation North America only experienced zero

point two percent which is the smallest out of all the listed countries.

On the other hand Europe experienced the largest amount of deforestation a total of nine point eight

percent.

So this is a striking difference that we see in the deforestation between North America and Europe.

Another striking difference is visible if we look at overgrazing North America experienced the smallest

amount of overgrazing only one point five percent whereas Oceania experienced the largest amount of

overgrazing a total of eleven point three percent.

So again this is a striking difference that we see between North America and Oceania

we can also see striking differences in the total land degraded North America experienced the smallest

land degradation at only 5 percent whereas Europe experienced the largest at twenty three percent you

will notice here that the highest and the lowest data points and the striking differences overlap with

each other in this data set over here.

So sometimes this can happen where the keen formation may overlap with each other.

And once again take note that not all key features are going to be present in every single type of graph

or chart that you see.

So it really depends on whether you get a trend graph or a comparative graph or a process or a diagram

OK.

Now an important part of getting a good score on your task achievement is accuracy.

It’s very important that you accurately describe the information in the info graphic.

So first of all you need to make sure that you are using the correct units of measurement Secondly make

sure to use words like approximately about around nearly to avoid inaccuracy.

Let’s take a look at some examples of this.

We have our bar graph over here.

Let’s take a look at the different ways that we can describe the data so we’re looking at the year nineteen

ninety nine for this example and our sentences in 1999 local fixed line calls reached a peak of 90 billion

minutes you will see that the local fixed line calls did in fact reach a peak of 90 billion minutes

now here we don’t have to use any of these words because this bar falls exactly on the 90 billion minute

mark.

It’s exactly on the 90 billion minute line.

Now if you were to say in nineteen ninety nine local fixed line calls reached a peak of 90 minutes.

You see 90 over here and you see minutes over here.

Is that correct.

Of course not.

That is wrong.

Why.

Because here the minutes are listed in billions billions.

So you have to write 90 billion minutes.

That’s correct.

Ninety minutes is wrong.

On the other hand if you write in 1999 local fixed line calls reached a peak of 90.

That is also wrong 90 what 90 minutes 90 seconds 90 hours.

What are we talking about.

You have to be clear and use the correct units of measurement let’s look at another example.

Mobiles surged in use from about three billion minutes in 1995 to nearly 45 billion minutes in 2002

notice our use of the words about and nearly why are we using these words while we’re using these words.

Because if you look at nineteen ninety five we’re not exactly sure about the number of minutes for the

mobile calls in nineteen ninety five.

Similarly in the year 2000 when we look at the mobile calls we’re again not sure exactly where the bar

graph falls because it doesn’t fall on any of these clearly defined lines so we’re not sure.

And to avoid inaccuracy we used the word nearly on the other hand if you were to say mobile searched

in use from three billion minutes in nineteen ninety five to forty five billion minutes in 2002 that’s

wrong.

Why.

Because you may have guessed that this looks to be like three billion minutes but we don’t really know

for sure if this is in fact 3 billion minutes and if this is in fact forty five billion minutes whenever

you are estimating what the numbers are you have to make sure to use words like approximately about

around and nearly to avoid inaccuracy.

All right now let’s talk about the structure of RSA because that is also an important part of task achievement.

If you properly structure your essay then it will be easy for you to answer whatever the question is

asking you for.

So let’s take a look.

As you will know by now we have a total four paragraphs in our writing task one essay in the first paragraph

in the introduction paragraph.

We have to paraphrase the question language in our own words in the next paragraph which is the overview

paragraph.

We have to describe the starting and the ending data points and also the highest and the lowest data

points of the infographics sometimes you may have a graph or a chart where both of these are not available

maybe only one of them is present.

If that’s the case then only discuss what is present if they’re both present then discuss them both.

Next four paragraphs number three and number four what you’re going to do is split your info graphic

in the third paragraph.

You’ll talk about the first half of the info graphic and in the fourth paragraph you will be discussing

the second half of the info graphic.

So to conclude a good structure will allow you to address all the different parts of the task and clearly

present your ideas.

And this is going to boost your task achievement score so that’s it for this video.

I’ll see you in the next one where we discuss the second ingredient to your success which is cohesion

and coherence.