What the exam asks
Every Academic Task 1 prompt asks you to summarise the main features and make comparisons where relevant, in at least 150 words and about 20 minutes. With static data, comparison is the task: a report that lists figures without comparing them rarely passes Band 5 for Task Achievement.
| Visual | What you compare | What the overview usually says |
|---|---|---|
| One pie chart | Shares of a single whole | Which category dominates, and how concentrated the whole is |
| Two or more pies for different places or groups | The same categories in different wholes | The biggest difference in make-up, and what the wholes share |
| Bar chart of categories | The size of separate categories, often for two or more groups | The ranking, and whether one group leads in every category |
| Table | Several variables across several items | The highest and lowest items, and the exception to the pattern |
| Mixed visuals (e.g. pie chart + table) | Two related data sets | One headline for each visual, linked if the data connect |
Two pies labelled with two different years are really a change-over-time task, so use trend language there. This lesson covers data from a single point in time.
The date in the prompt sets your tense: past simple for a past year (accounted for), present simple for undated data (account for), and future forms for projections (is expected to account for).
Core ideas
Find the story before you write
Spend two to three minutes on four questions:
- What is the largest and what is the smallest?
- Which categories are close enough to group together?
- Is there a clear contrast (two groups, two formats, two regions)?
- Is there an exception that breaks the main pattern?
Answers 1 and 3 usually become your overview. Answers 2 and 4 organise your body paragraphs.