Review: Describing The Line — IELTS Collocation: Use The Words That Belong Together

What You Should Now Control

Five things this chapter taught. Tick only what you could do with a chart in front of you and twenty minutes on the clock.

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Tick what you can do right now

The trap this chapter exists to remove

Sort the Whole Chapter

Twenty items, mixed. Put each one back with the job it does on a chart.

Sort each item into the correct category

Names the movement

Sizes or times the movement

Approximates a figure

Compares quantities

Frames the time

Unassigned

plummet

fluctuate

level off

surge

marginally

abruptly

considerably

steadily

just under

in excess of

a mere

roughly

outnumber

respectively

a minority of

twice as many

at the outset

trough

throughout the period

by the end of

Mixed Recall

Ten questions across the chapter. Several options are grammatical and still wrong — that is the point.

Weighted towards the three sprints that decide most Task 1 marks: trend verbs, degree adverbs and proportion.

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A ten-year chart. Which opening reports rather than lists?

One Paragraph, Five Clusters

A Task 1 description that needs an item from every part of this chapter.

Fill each gap with ONE word unless the hint says otherwise. Check every adverb against the verb beside it before you move on.

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Household internet access in one region, 2010–2020 (%)

2010: 41 · 2012: 46 · 2014: 58 · 2016: 79 · 2017: 80 · 2019: 80 · 2020: 74

the figure stood at 41%, and it gently over the first four years. Between 2014 and 2016 access , climbing more than twenty percentage points in two years. It then at around 80%, holding that level the following three years. The series at 80% in 2016 before falling back to 74% by 2020 — a decline of six percentage points. Households with access those without by roughly three to one at the end of the period, the ratio had been closer to two to one at the start. the period, the overall movement was upward despite the final dip.

Chapter Production Task

Describe a decade in four sentences and find out which band your Task 1 vocabulary is sitting at.

Write four sentences describing the data below, using at least six items from this chapter.

Average monthly rent in two cities (index, 2012 = 100)

| Year | City A | City B | | --- | --- | --- | | 2012 | 100 | 100 | | 2014 | 118 | 104 | | 2016 | 149 | 109 | | 2018 | 171 | 106 | | 2020 | 168 | 121 |

Four sentences. Use at least six Chapter 2 items from at least three of the five clusters:

trend verbs · degree adverbs · approximation · proportion and comparison · period language

The test is what you leave out. Ten data points are shown; a Band 7 response names perhaps four. Reporting a year that adds nothing is the error here — so is any adverb that contradicts its verb.

Your four sentences*

Four sentences. Six or more chapter items. Select — do not list.

Which chapter items did you use?*

Just the items, separated by commas.

Your Weakest Cluster

Name the part of the chart you describe least confidently, and get those items back first.

Learners can ask follow-up questions and keep the thread going.

Five clusters in this chapter:

trend verbs · degree adverbs · approximation · proportion and comparison · period language

Which one did you get wrong most often today?

Name it, and say what actually goes wrong. In this chapter there are two very different failures: writing something inaccurate about the chart, and writing something accurate but flat. Only one of those is urgent.

just now