On every paid plan
IELTS Writing Task 1 practice
A real generated chart, 20 minutes, and marking that checks what you reported against the numbers actually in it. Academic and General Training.
Format checked against IELTS on .
The task, on both tracks
At least 150 words, 20 minutes, worth half of Task 2 in the Writing band. What you are asked to do depends on your track:
- Academic — describe a figure. A bar chart, line graph, pie chart, table, map or process diagram.
- General Training — write a letter, formal, semi-formal or informal, to a given situation.
Both are built. The 20 minutes is a real limit rather than advice: every minute past it comes out of the essay worth double.
The overview rule, which is worth a band and a half
The published descriptors cap Task Achievement at band 5 for a response with no overview — however precise the rest of it is. An overview is one or two sentences stating the main trend or the biggest contrast, without numbers.
Here that rule is enforced rather than quoted. Most tools ask a model whether your response “covered the key features”, which is an open question a language model answers generously. Because we generated the data, we know what the key features are — the peak, the crossover, the largest change, the dominant share — and the marking asks a closed question about each one: was it reported, and was it accurate.
The chart is data, not a picture
The figure is produced as numbers and drawn by a renderer. No image model is involved, deliberately — a diffusion model cannot render an accurate axis or a legible label, and a chart whose figures disagree with its own question marks a candidate on data that was never there.
Validation refuses a broken figure rather than repairing it: a series one value short, a percentage pie totalling 118, a flat dataset with no features worth reporting, a process arrow pointing at a stage that does not exist.
So when the marking says you missed the crossover, it is not an opinion. It is arithmetic.
Four criteria, and the one that is named differently
Task 1 is marked on Task Achievement, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Task 2 uses Task Response in the same position — the same slot in the descriptors asking a different question about a different task. Mixing them up is common and costs nothing; assuming they are marked the same way does cost something.
Questions, answered
How long should IELTS Writing Task 1 be?
At least 150 words in 20 minutes. Task 1 is worth half as much as Task 2 in the Writing band, so the 20 minutes is a real limit rather than a suggestion — time spent past it comes out of the essay that counts double.
Do I need an overview in IELTS Task 1?
Yes, and it is the single most expensive thing to leave out. The published band descriptors cap Task Achievement at band 5 for a response with no overview, however good the rest of it is. An overview states the main trend or the biggest contrast without listing numbers.
What is the difference between Academic and General Training Task 1?
Academic Task 1 asks you to describe a figure — a chart, table, map or process. General Training Task 1 asks you to write a letter, formal or informal. They are different tasks marked on the same four criteria, and we build both.
Are the charts real data or a picture?
Real data. The figure is generated as numbers and drawn by a renderer, never produced by an image model — a diffusion model cannot draw an accurate axis or a legible label, and a chart whose figures disagree with its question marks a candidate on data that was never there. Because we hold the numbers, the marking can check whether the peak, the crossover and the biggest change you reported are actually the peak, the crossover and the biggest change.
What are the four Task 1 marking criteria?
Task Achievement, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Task 1 uses Task Achievement where Task 2 uses Task Response — the same position in the descriptors, asking a different question about a different task.
Task 1 marking is on every paid plan. The free plan marks Task 2 — four essays a month, no card.
The rest of the paper
IELTS Writing Task 2 is the half that counts double. Reading, Listening and Speaking have their own pages, and the full IELTS practice test covers all four.
What the numbers mean: the band descriptors explained.