Understanding Task Achievement Marking criteria in IELTS writing task 1 Academics

The article aims at understanding how your IELTS academic exam writing task 1 essay will be marked in terms of achievement of task and its importance behind the said marking score. 

Keep reading to know more. 

Marking Criteria 

Your IELTS examiner will assess your skills based on four major criteria as far as task two is concerned. Every criteria determines 25% of your total score in that section. You will be given a score for every single criteria and then the same will be averaged into a total score for the writing section. 

The criteria are: 

• Task response and achievement 

Your score under this criterion will depend on how well you are in terms of paying attention to the requirements of the question. It will also depend on your skills being relevant in terms of the questions. Going off topic and not making sense will only lead you to a lower score spectrum.  

• Cohesion and coherence 

Concisely crafted pieces, written in not more than four paragraphs with a logically central idea is what your examiner is looking for. Your score in this criterion depends on your ability to present your ideas in a structured manner, with the right linking words supporting the body of the written piece and having a central topic flowing in a particular paragraph. 

• Vocabulary and lexical resource 

You can score well in this particular section by keeping in mind just three things: 

• Your ability to use appropriate words 
• Your ability to use the words in their right collocative manner 
• And, your ability to spell those words right. 

These three tips will go a long way as far as this particular section is concerned. 

• Grammatical accuracy and range

Errors must not be made in the most common grammar rules. You must avoid using the wrong tenses and the wrong verbs as much as possible. Also, you must not forget to focus on the sentence structure and syntax, word order in the sentence, as well as the correct punctuation marks.

The following is the basic structure for answering your IELTS academics writing task 1 essay question: 

Now, let’s talk about task achievement in detail 

Task achievement in IELTS writing task 1 Academics 

• Task achievement simply focuses on how well you are trying to satisfy the essential requirements of the task provided in the question. The way you identify the correct information and report the same is the basis for your score on task achievement. 
• Getting task achievement right is the primary difference between a band score 5 and band score 7 for the task. Presenting a clear overview, a clear introduction, and the rightly summarised body paragraphs that are crisp, clear in presentation and highlighted well is a great way to begin your task. 
• Completing the task with atleast 150 words without missing out on the key details is how you go ahead and get your scores  based on task achievement. Moreover, completing the writing part in under 20 minutes is another factor to getting a good score in terms of task achievement. 

Focus on writing a qualitative answer, which is proofread properly is another factor to achieving a good band score on the basis of task achievement. 

Fundamentally, to score better in terms of task achievement, you simply need to identify and report the key information. 

Identification of main trends

Irrespective of the graph or chart, you need to measure the information and if the information is measured against certain dates or years,  you must always consider the graph as a trending graph. 

You need to identify the trend by following the directions of the slopes. 

To explain this, let’s take a look at an example. 

As you can see from the examples. 

• X axis is the level of education 
• Y axis is the percentage 
• Overall data is about computer ownership by education level in 2002 and 2010

Graph mentioned in the above question is a trending graph since years are mentioned. The circled areas are the lowest and the highest points in the graph and the arrow represent the overall increase in the trend in the question 

As far as answering this question is concerned, you will be required to focus on the significant changes that have happened in 2010, as compared to the year 2002. 

However, you need to ensure you are not describing every single detail, especially the minimal ones describing any upward or downward movement.

Significant trends are supposed to be talked about. Also ensure you are using the right dates/data along with the right tenses while writing your answer. While writing, you also need to ensure that you do not mention anything that does not appear in the graph.

Your opinions are not supposed to be mentioned in such questions. Just describe the things as they are. 

An accurate understanding of the trends is a must when attempting such questions. 

Identify comparisons

The second step is to identify comparisons. Comparisons always come into play when you have multiple graphs. 

This can be better explained with the help of an example. 

In the example illustrated above, you can see there is a pie chart as well as a table that discusses land degradation on two levels, regional and worldwide. The Pie chart and the table are therefore described as a comparative graph, since you need to look at both to understand the features and write the correct analysis. 

There is a lack of trend here because there are not units of time to compare data against. Therefore, there are no trends to consider. No rise, no falls, no jumps or slumps. We can only look for the comparisons in case of multiple graphs. 

The one thing to do in such questions is to only focus on the extremes, i.e. the highest and lowest figures in order to write the correct answer. To answer in the right manner, you also need to group the data presented in both kinds of graphs and charts together.

You only need to pick out the relevant information and present your answer by highlighting the main features from both the graphs and write them in a general manner.

How can your score be increased? 

As far as task achievement is concerned, your score can be easily increased, if you can: 

• Identify all the key features correctly 
• Analyse the question correctly
• Highlight the key features as a part of the overview
• Support your paragraph with the right information and the right data 
• Avoid providing unnecessary information or data with no significant implication over the analysis
• Avoid putting in your personal opinion 
• Correctly present your answer as a factual report 
• Write a little over 150 words