IELTS Writing Task 1: the main features

Last week I wrote about looking carefully to find the main features before you start your description of a graph, chart or diagram. In the table below, I've highlighted my choices for the main features (in purple).

Here's my paragraph describing the information highlighted above:

It is clear that between 2006 and 2010 the main reason why people used their mobile phones was to make calls. However, during the same period there was a marked increase in the popularity of other mobile phone features, with the most dramatic increase being seen in the use of mobiles to search the Internet.

Comments

[Mert]

Hi Simon

In my country there are two center of ielts, namely British council and IDP.

Which one of that is the best for us to take ielts exam

Please help me.

[Simon]

It's exactly the same test in both places.

[ranbir]

Simon
Can we add data in our paragraph which is given in table ..??

[Susanna]

Hi Simon,

Is it ok if you do not mention the actual numbers ( percentage in this case) ?

[sherry]

The rended chart is a table char it illustrates the enrage of
different type of mobile phone used for features and communicate
in year 2006 to 2010
Having a glance at the chart it shows that percentage of making
calls and sending and receiving text were same 100% and 79%.In
2006 the interest of playing games was less at 17% but in farther year
it start increasing and goes to 41% in 2010.people were not interested
in using data.

[Nodir]

good morning Simon)) i've got some questions. Is it possible to use phrases like "the most striking feature is that, another noticable aspect of the data is that"??? also, can I use "accordingly" insted of respectively?

[Simon]

Hi Ranbir and Susanna,

The paragraph above is only my 'overview / summary' paragraph describing the general trends. After that paragraph I would continue to describe specific details.

...

Hi Nodir,

Yes, those phrases are fine.

[Alvin]

Hi everyone,

here is some of my introduction, which one is better. thanks...

1. The illustration shows a comparison of different proportion of mobile phone subscribers usage of different cellphone features: text messaging, making calls, playing games, photo taking,searching the internet, and video recording in 2006 to 2010.

2. The comparison of different proportion of mobile phone subscribers usage of different cellphone features: text messaging, making calls, playing games, internet usage, and video recording in 2006 to 2010 is illustrated in the chart.

[Sara]

Here is my overview:

Overall, what underwent greatest growth in all of the mobile phone features were playing games, playing music, searching the internet and recording video although the latter two activities lack data for the year of 2006. By contrast, the other three major functions which contributed mostly remained fairly stable during the period.

Could anyone advise me if this is a good overview?

[Sara]

Hi again,

I realized I made a mistake in describing numbers as Simon mentioned in one of sessions. So I refined the paragraph as below:

Overall, what underwent greatest growth in the popularity of all the mobile phone features were playing games, playing music, searching the internet and recording video although the latter two activities lack data for the year of 2006. By contrast, the figures of the other top three functions remained fairly stable during the period.

Is it better now?

[Sea]

Hi Simon,

I find table essays are very tough because they only have numbers, which are tough to find any trends.

I'm working on a question that featured 2 tables (that show the average number of students taught by each lecturer in Australian universities from 1991 to 2007)

The first table has only 1 row which shows the average numbers of student taught by each lecturer are 12.3 (1991), 14.4 (1995), 17.1 (1999), 19.8 (2003) and 21.6 (2007).

In overview paragraph, I mentioned "the average number of students had increased throughout the years". In detailed paragraph, I mentioned "In 1991, the number of students taught by a lecturer stood at 12.3. This number had increased steadily every 4 years to 2 times larger at 21.6 in 2007". Then I don't have anything else to mention for the detailed paragraph, which is too short!!! There are still 3 more numbers to mention but they have no significant value and I already mentioned their start and their end numbers!?!

The second table shows average number of students taught by each lecturer in 2001 and in 2 categories: lecture-based and laboratory-based. In lecture-based categorie, there are education (22.5), sociology (24.2), law (28.5). In laboratory-based category, there are science (14.0), agriculture (14.7) and chemistry (17.5).

I mentioned in overview paragraph that lecture-based subjects were more popular than laboratory-based ones. Then in detailed paragraph I mentioned the highest and lowest number of each categories, which was totally fine.

My question is that: Using the highest and lowest value method seems to work only if there are many numbers to mention and there are fluctuation in numbers. For this kind of table that there is only 1 row of data and those data has only 1 trend, after describe the highest and lowest number, is it weird to have only 2 sentence detailed paragraph that describe the lowest and highest??

[Serg6600]

Hi Simon, I've got a question related to your suggestion. It seems to me that recording video feature demonstrated a more significant growth in popularity (almost four times), while the internet feature use merely almost doubled. So, am I right that you recommend to highlight change in number instead of growth rate?

[gagan]

Hlo Simon
I want to know about striking feature for graph,where I have to write this ?