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Do I Have to Compare in Writing Task 1

1,520 views · Published 1 February 2018 · 5:47 · Indexed 6 November 2026

Channel: IELTS Energy TV · 2018 · Education

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Today you’ll learn if you have to compare in Writing Task 1 for Academic IELTS.

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Week in and week out, IELTS candidates get hung up on one part of the Writing Task 1 question, the part that says “...and make comparisons where relevant.”

This actually leads to lower scores. 

How?

Well, students become overly focussed on this instruction, and end up with really complicated paragraphs.

You don’t want to have complicated paragraphs- this will give you lower Cohesion Coherence scores.

As far as organization goes, you need to keep it simple. Just put one group of numbers in paragraph 2 and one group in paragraph 3. 

For instance, males and females could be the two groups of numbers in some Static questions. Males in one paragraph, and females in the other.

Another danger of trying to make too many comparisons is that you miss out on including the most important numbers, and end up including numbers that are not key.

Having the wrong numbers, or the wrong amount of numbers, brings down your Task Achievement score.

Think about it like this- in an Argument essay, also called a Comparison Essay, you divide the positives and negatives into two separate paragraphs, right? 

So, by putting the information separately, you are still making comparisons.

Basically, with organization, keep it clear and simple for higher scores. It’s vocabulary and grammar that you should try to be more complex in.

In our online IELTS course, 3 Keys IELTS, we give you all the strategies and practice you need to score highly on all parts of the IELTS exam.

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