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On Cambridge IELTS 18 Academic Writing Test 1, candidates face a Task 1 graph followed by a Task 2 opinion (agree/disagree) essay — a combination that rewards planning more than raw writing speed. Task 1 asks you to summarise information about the percentage of the population in four Asian countries living in cities from 1970 to 2020. Task 2 then turns to a discursive prompt: The most important aim of science should be to improve people’s lives.
Lead with overall direction (rising, falling, fluctuating) and then group the lines or series by behaviour. Always include a starting value and an end value when describing a trend, and avoid copying numbers from the axis without paraphrasing the unit. State a clear thesis in the introduction — partial agreement is acceptable, but the position must be unambiguous.
Spend twenty minutes flat on Task 1 — five planning, twelve writing, three reviewing — and forty on Task 2, with at least five of those at the end for proofreading. Task 2 is worth twice the marks, so do not let an over-long graph description steal time from your essay. For band 7, the essay's argumentation matters more than the report's elegance, but a clean overview sentence in Task 1 is non-negotiable.
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