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In this tutorial, you’ll learn

* How an IELTS examiner would look at one of the more usual Task 1 questions – MAPS! I love map questions but many students are unfamiliar with them and so might panic in the exam!

* How to understand what is needed and what clues to look for before you start writing.

* Examples of good grammar and key useful vocabulary from our review of 2 students’ essays – one Band 6 and one Band 7-7.5 as our examples.

* How you can practice by looking at another kind of map question.

* Really important vocabulary needed for talking about geographical location and change.

This will help you in your IELTS because

* By understanding what makes a good Band 7.5 MAP task 1 essay you can work towards achieving a Band 7 yourself simply by listening to our corrections and suggestions.

* You will be able to show the examiner a range of useful core lexis important for your response to Task 1 Maps and also useful for Task 2 essays too.

* You will gain confidence in using the passive voice which is perfect for this type of question.

* You can show strength in ‘Task Achievement’ using quick checks to make sure you are fully answering all aspects of the instructions.

This tutorial is divided into three parts: 

* We will look at a Task 1 Map question from our online course using two students’ essays and seeing why one scored a Band 7 – 7.5 and why the other scored 6.

* We will look at another Task 1 Map question from a course book and look at how we could answer this one.

* I will give you lots of really useful and important vocabulary which is crucial – that is to say – really important for successfully answering these questions in your IELTS exam.

This tutorial will help you: 

* Choose the right information to include in your essay

* Use the right sentence structures focusing on passive voice constructions and specific vocabulary.

* Decide on the perfect tense to use

* How to best organise the information in your response

To guide you – I have colour coded each of my corrections and recommendations to make sure they correspond really easily to the British Council / IELTS band grade marking criteria (As you know there are four areas of assessment: Task Achievement red, Coherence and Cohesion blue, Lexical Resource,- green Grammatical Range and Accuracy purple ).

SO, If you haven’t yet come across a Task 1 Map question they usually consist of two maps which might be of a landscape or an island or a town, one before and one after some kind of change and the question rubric asks you to ‘Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features and make comparisons where necessary.’ Like other Task 1’s the guide suggests 20 mins time and to write at least 150 words.