Shadowing Practice: IELTS Academic Task 1 | Line Graphs Made Easy - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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I used to be an IELTS examiner and I've evaluated thousands of students' answers.
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I know what you need to do to get a high score based on the IELTS marking criteria, and I'm going to show you in this video.
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My name is Eli, and my IELTS courses have helped students score band 7, band 8, and even band 9 in IELTS writing.
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You can start all of my IELTS courses for free at englishprotips.com.
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In today's lesson, we're focusing on IELTS writing.
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We're going to write a model answer for this line graph.
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By the way, make sure to download the PDF checklist and use it when you're writing your own answers.
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Let's look at the graphic in a bit more detail.
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The graph below shows the number of tourists visiting a particular Caribbean island between 2010 and 2017.
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We have the trend for visitors staying on cruise ships, visitors staying on the island, and the total number of visitors to the island.
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Before we write a model answer, let's recap some of the vocabulary for line graphs.
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How would you describe this trend?
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Between 2010 and 2017, the number of visitors staying on cruise ships,
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something from 0.25 to 0.5 million.
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What would you put in this space?
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Perhaps increased, rose, grew, climbed,
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went up or if you're paying a lot of attention doubled.
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These are all great verbs for describing upward trends.
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I would avoid using extreme verbs like surged, plummeted, rocketed, skyrocketed.
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These aren't as appropriate for academic task one.
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We could also use a noun here.
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There was an something in the number of visitors between 2010 and 2017.
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There was an increase.
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There was an upward trend.
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There was a rise.
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There was growth in the number of visitors.
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These are all great nouns for describing upward trends.
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Now we might also want to use a different word to talk about how great the degree of the increase is.
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There was a something increase.
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You could say there was a minimal increase, a marginal increase, a slight increase, a small increase.
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These are all great adjectives.
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Or if the trend looks like this, there was a moderate increase.
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Or like this?
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There was a large increase.
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Considerable, noticeable, significant, substantial, steep, sizable.
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These are all great adjectives that you could use.
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What I'd recommend is taking, say, three or four and using them regularly in your practice answers.
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However, what would you do if the sentence started like this?
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The number of visitors increased something.
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In this case, we need to use an adverb.
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The number of visitors increased minimally, marginally, slightly, smally.
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No, we can't say smally.
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What can we put instead of small or large?
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We can put to a small extent or to a large extent.
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Now how would you describe this trend?
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Between 2010 and 2017 the number of visitors staying on cruise ships?
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Decreased, fell, declined, went down or halved.
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These are all great verbs for describing downward trends.
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And then there was a something in the number of visitors.
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There was a decrease, there was a downward trend, there was a fall, there was a decline.
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All great nouns for describing downward trends and we can use the same adjectives and adverbs.
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However, what is if you see a trend like this.
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The number of visitors staying on cruise ships, something between 2010 and 2017, stayed the same.
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Stayed constant, remained at 0.5.
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All great vocabulary for describing this trend.
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And this trend?
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This is a common thing that you'll see in line graphs.
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The number of visitors staying on cruise ships plateaued from 2014, which means it went up and then it stayed constant.
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And this, the number of visitors staying on cruise ships fluctuated throughout the period.
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Let's go back to our academic task 1 graphic and I would challenge you, how would you describe these trends?
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You can pause the video and just describe them to yourself.
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Now we're going to write our model answer for this.
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The first thing that we're going to do is analyze the graphic.
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We're going to spend one to four minutes doing this.
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The first thing to notice is visitors staying on cruise ships
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plus visitors staying on the island equals the total number of visitors.
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If you didn't notice this, you wouldn't really be able to get above band six for task achievements.
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The other thing I would pay attention to is the general trends.
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The total number goes up.
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The visitors staying on islands goes up.
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The visitors staying on cruise ships also go up.
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So I would draw these lines on the graphic.
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Then I would circle particular points in the line graph where I think important things happen.
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I'd say the most important is this point here.
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Why?
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Because this is where visitors staying on the island is surpassed by visitors staying on cruise ships.
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So I would make sure to mention that.
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The final thing you should do
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when you're analyzing the graphic is to think about a logical way to organize your body paragraphs.
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There are two ways to do this.
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You can group by category or you could group by date.
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If you group by category you would have one paragraph on cruise ships, one paragraph on islands and one paragraph describing the total trend.
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If you group by date you would potentially have 2010 to 2013 roughly in the middle and then 2013 to 2017.
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Or you would choose a date where something significant happens.
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So that's how we would analyze the graphic.
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Let's move on to how we would write the introduction.
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For that we use this part and we can use a bit of a cheat sheet.
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The graphic type plus the verb plus the description.
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So it says the graph below and we can change that to the line graph.
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We've got the word shows and we can change that to presents.
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The number of tourists visiting a particular Caribbean island changes in
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the number of people traveling to a Caribbean island between 2010 and 2017.
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From 2010 to 2017, that would be a fine introduction.
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Let's just add a bit more.
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Separating those who stayed on cruise ships from those who stayed on the island alongside the combined total.
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We've now written our introduction.
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If you want to practice writing introductions for a range of different task 1 graphics, check out my academic task 1 writing course.
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I'll show you how to write high-scoring answers for any graphic type.
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You can watch video lessons, read model answers, do quizzes, download PDFs, and even get AI feedback on your answers.
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You can start for free at EnglishProtips.com.
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Let's move on to the overview.
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For the overview, you would look at the general trends.
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So the total number goes up, the visitors staying on the island goes up, and the visitors staying on cruise ships go up.
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So let's say that overall visitor numbers increased markedly across the period.
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We always start our overview with the word overall.
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We've got this phrase increased markedly.
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Increased markedly means a sizable increase, a steep increase, a large increase across the period.
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So we're showing the examiner that we're describing the trend throughout the whole period, from the beginning until the end.
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Now that would be enough for a good overview, however we can also mention some other details.
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Let's for example focus on this particular point here.
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So we'll notice that from 2010 to 2015 slash 16 the visitors staying on the island are the dominant group.
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However from that point onwards it's the visitors staying on cruise ships that take up a larger proportion of the total.
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Although island-based travelers accounted for the larger share for most years, so we've got accounted for the larger share, we're using comparative language.
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Let's continue.
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The sharp rise in cruise ship tourism played a decisive role
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towards the end of the time frame in pushing total arrivals to their highest level.
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We've got vocabulary like a sharp rise played a decisive role,
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it means was very important in pushing total arrivals to their highest level.
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So a superlative phrase.
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So we've now written a very high scoring overview.
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Let's go to the body paragraphs.
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Now, like I said earlier, there are two ways to organize the body paragraphs by category or by date.
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In this lesson, I'm going to show you how you can organize it by date.
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So I would have body paragraph one that looks at 2010 to 2013
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and then body paragraph two that looks at 2013 to 2017.
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Let's write body paragraph one first.
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Let's start by talking about what happens at the beginning of the trend.
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So this point here.
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At the beginning of the period total visitor numbers stood around
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one million with approximately three quarters staying on the island and the remaining quarter on cruise ships.
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Okay, great.
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We've got phrases like at the beginning of the period.
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We're showing the examiner immediately that we're talking about the very first year.
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We've also got approximately three quarters.
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So approximately or around is great vocabulary for describing data.
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We're not saying it is exactly three quarters.
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It's approximately three quarters.
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And the remaining quarter on cruise ships.
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So we've identified now
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that the total number is the figure for the cruise ships plus the figure for the islands
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and we're describing them as fractions.
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Three quarters on islands, one quarter on cruise ships.
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Now let's focus on what else happens between 2010 and 2013.
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Between 2010 and 2013 the overall figure climbs steadily to two million.
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Okay we're showing the examiner what period we're talking about and we're using vocabulary like climbed steadily.
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This increase was mainly the result of growth in island-based tourism
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which rose to about 1.5 million while cruise ship figures remained comparatively modest and showed only minor variation.
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This increase, we're referring back to the previous sentence, which rose to about 1.5 million.
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This is a non-defining relative clause which is advanced grammar I'll teach you in this lesson.
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Comparatively modest.
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A great phrase for describing how the trend changes.
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Minor variation.
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There's only small differences as the trend continues.
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Let's move now to body paragraph two.
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That's going to look at 2013 to 2017.
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After 2013 the pattern shifted noticeably.
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We're starting with a short topic sentence that tells the examiner that we're now looking at the period after 2013.
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The number of cruise ship visitors rose substantially, climbing from roughly 1 million in 2014 to 2 million in 2017.
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Rose substantially.
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Great vocabulary to say that it goes up to a large degree.
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We've also got this word climbing.
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Climbing from roughly 1 million to 2 million.
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Again, we're using what's called a participle clause.
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Again, advanced grammar I'm going to teach you in this lesson.
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As a result of this increase, by 2016 the number of visitors staying on cruise ships had surpassed that of island-based visitors.
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Now we've got the word increase here.
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Notice within two sentences we're using the word rise, climb, and increase.
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We're showing the examiner that we have lots of different vocabulary for describing the same trend.
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This shows a high variety of vocabulary which can help you to get a high score for LexCore resource.
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We also have the grammar had surpassed.
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This is the past perfect.
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Again, advanced grammar I'm going to teach you in this lesson.
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In contrast, the number of visitors staying on the island changed little, staying constant at around 1.5 million for most of the remaining period,
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apart from a temporary fall to about 1.25 million in 2016.
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In contrast, a great linking word that says we're going to describe a different trend.
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staying constant at around 1.5 million.
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Great vocabulary that we looked at at the beginning of this lesson.
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Together, these trends resulted in total arrivals reaching approximately 3.5 million in the final year.
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Approximately 3.5 million.
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Again, great vocabulary for describing data.
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We've now written high-scoring body paragraphs.
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Before you go, I want to teach you some of that advanced grammar that I told you about.
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Before that, let's look at some of the cohesive devices.
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So here's our answer in its entirety.
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Look at the words that I use.
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Words like overall, although, at the beginning of the period, between 2010 and 2013.
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This increase after 2013, as a result of this increase, In contrast, together, we use these cohesive devices,
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these linking words, to organize our answer in a logical and easy to read way.
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Some of the grammar.
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The first thing I want to teach you is participle clauses.
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This is such good grammar for academic task one.
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Let me show you what it is.
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The number of cruise ship visitors rose substantially.
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Now, we could write that as a sentence, and if we did, it's a good sentence.
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We've got rise substantially.
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Brilliant.
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However, if we add this second part, we go from say band six or seven to band eight or nine.
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Climbing from roughly one million in 2014 to two million in 2017.
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Okay, let me show you another example.
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In contrast, the number of visitors staying on the island changed little.
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Again, fine.
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Let's add something.
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Staying constant at around 1.5 million.
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Again, we've gone from a simple sentence to a complex sentence.
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The figure fell steadily.
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Fine.
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Declining from 80% to 40%.
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Okay, these are called participle clauses.
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We start with a main clause and then we add a participle clause starting ing.
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The way to do it is to make sure that these words mean the same thing.
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We're using a synonym here in the participle clause.
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The figure fell steadily, declining from 80% to 40%.
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Use participle clauses in your answers.
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I also want to teach you relative clauses.
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These are also used to give extra information.
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So we could say the increase was mainly the result of growth in island-based tourism.
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And we could stop there.
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Or we could improve it, which rose to about 1.5 million.
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So this which refers back to island-based tourism.
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We've got the noun and then we've got a comma with which and then we've got a verb.
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For example, The figure reached a peak in 2017.
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That's fine.
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That could be our sentence, or we add the non-defining relative clause, which marked the highest point of the period.
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Much better.
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Retail became less popular.
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Fine.
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Which resulted in a decline in applications.
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Much better.
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I also want to teach you the past perfect.
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We use this to describe an event that happens before a date.
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So if we look at our line graph and we want to describe what happens here, we could say, By 2016, the number of visitors staying on cruise ships,
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something that of island-based visitors.
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What would you put in this space?
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If you put had surpassed, you're showing advanced grammar.
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This is the past perfect.
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We form it by having by plus the time and then had and then a past participle.
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So by 2018, sales had reached 500,000 units.
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By 2020, the unemployment rate had fallen to 4%.
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The final grammar I want to teach you that's very useful for line graphs are comparatives and superlatives.
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This allows us to compare the trends.
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So in the essay, I said, island-based travelers accounted for the larger share, pushing total arrivals to their highest level.
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So the first one larger is a comparative.
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Now with comparatives we take the word large and then if it has one syllable we add er so larger.
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If the word that we're describing has more than one syllable for example beautiful or interesting then we add more or less.
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We don't say beautifuler, interestinger, no we say more beautiful, less beautiful.
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The same happens with superlatives.
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If it's one syllable we add EST, the highest.
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If it's two or more syllables we add most or least.
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So the most beautiful, the least beautiful.
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Now guys what I would recommend is that you write your own answers to this question.
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I'll put a link to the lesson below the video
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and you can write your own answer and get AI feedback on your writing.
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Best of luck with all of your studies and I'll see you in the next lesson.
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Bye then.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “IELTS Academic Task 1”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: visitor, trend, staying, island, cruise. This video has 254 sentences and 2671 words to shadow. The speech runs for 18:00. The speaker talks at a steady 148 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| visitor noun | /ˈvɪzɪtɚ/ | Someone who visits someone else; someone staying as a guest. |
| paragraph noun | /ˈpæɹəɡɹæf/ | A passage in text that starts on a new line, the first line sometimes being indented, and usually marks a change of topic. |
| vocabulary noun | /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/ | A usually alphabetized and explained collection of words e.g. of a particular field, or prepared for a specific purpose, often for learning. |
| clause noun | /klɔːz/ | A group of words that contains a subject and a verb; it may be part of a sentence or may constitute the whole sentence, depending on the syntax in each… |
| graph noun | /ɡɹæf/ | A data chart (graphical representation of data) intended to illustrate the relationship between a set (or sets) of numbers (quantities, measurements or… |
| participle noun | /ˈpɑɹtɪˌsɪpəl/ | A form of a verb that may function as an adjective, noun or adverb. English has two types of participles: the present participle and the past participle. In… |
| examiner noun | /əɡˈzæmɪnɚ/ | A person who investigates someone or something. |
| bind verb | /ˈbaɪ̯nd/ | To tie; to confine by any ligature. |
| verb noun | /vɝb/ | A word that indicates an action, event, or state of being. |
| surpass verb | /sɚˈpæs/ | To go beyond or exceed (something) in an adjudicative or literal sense. |
| syllable noun | /ˈsɪl.ə.bəl/ | A unit of human speech which often forms words corresponding to one opening of the mouth; a vowel and its surrounding consonants. |
| noun noun | /naʊn/ | A word that functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as person, animal, place, word, thing, phenomenon, substance, quality, or idea… |
| comparative adjective | /kəmˈpæɹətɪv/ | Of or relating to comparison. |
| steadily adverb | /ˈstɛdɪli/ | In a steady manner; with a steady progression. |
| substantially adverb | In a strong or substantial manner; considerably. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| go up verb | To move upwards. |
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. |
| go down verb | To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one. |
| stand around verb | To stand without doing anything; to do nothing productive; to waste time. |
| take up verb | To pick up. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- How would you describe this trend?
- What would you put in this space?
- However, what would you do if the sentence started like this?
- No, we can't say smally.
- What can we put instead of small or large?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | If you didn't notice this, you wouldn't really · If you group by category you would have · If you group by date you would potentially |
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to be · used to give |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've evaluated · have helped · We've now written |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is surpassed · is advanced · are called |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 63 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, we've, I'll. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: variation /ˌvɛəɹiˈeɪʃn̩/, fraction /ˈfɹæk.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, participle /ˈpɑɹtɪˌsɪpəl/, examiner /əɡˈzæmɪnɚ/, comparative /kəmˈpæɹətɪv/, superlative /suˈpɝlətɪv/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like visitor, paragraph, vocabulary.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.