IELTS 1 - The table compares the data in terms of forested land in different continents of the world

The table shows forested land in millions of hectares in different parts of the world.

Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

The table compares the data in terms of forested land in different continents of the world in the years 1990, 2000 and 2005 respectively.

Overall, the forest area in Africa, Oceania and South America experienced a downward trend throughout the period, while the forested land in Europe showed a steady but significant rise. In addition, the forest area in North America and Asia underwent fluctuations over the period.

In 1990 the forest area in Africa and South America were 749 and 946 million hectares respectively. The forest area in both continents decreased sharply over a decade. After another five years forest area in both continents declined from 709 to 691 and from 904 to 882 million hectares continually. In contrast, despite the forest area in Oceania showed a dropping tendency, it experienced only a slight decrease from 199 to 198 million hectares between 1990 to 2000 and then dropped another one million hectare to reach 197 million hectares at the end of the period.

The forest area in Europe was 989 million hectares in the beginning of the period which illustrated a gradual declined growth. It went up nine million hectares over a decade and then increased subsequently three million hectares after five years. Besides, both forest areas in Asia and North America went down 6 and 3 million hectares from 1990 to 2000. In 2005, the forest area in Asia hit a high-point of 584 million hectares rapidly while North America remained steady.

If possible, I want to know what brand I could score now because I am preparing my IELTS. Please also let me know the problems that I should avoid. Thank you.

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You wrote 240 words, that might be too many. For Writing Task 1 you need to write at least 150 words in 20 minutes, but from what I have seen, it is recommended to write 170-190 words.

You used "forested land" and "forest area" too many times. You need to avoid too many repetitions. To do that you can use synonyms or change sentence structures.

@RomanKoch

Thank you very much! I will write down these advice in my notebook. Your comment is very helpful.

You should make sure that you write a proper summary overview. That means, include the rundown of the countries and the measurement type. Most students overlook that information in the overview but it is actually a part of the summary being presented. The overview is the basis of the trending statement. Which is why you have to do a good job in summarizing the information.

Your paragraphs are running too long. Your sentences eventually turn into run-on sentences because you use commas to separate your data presentation. You only have 20 minutes to report this data in written form. That means you need to keep your data short but informative. You are not expected to report all of the information provided. Only the most important parts such as comparison points, similar measurements, and the like.

You should not write more than 190 words due to the limited time frame. Remember, you have to leave at least 5 minutes to review and finalize your content. Save the long writing for the Task 2 section. That is where you need to write a long essay.

Since this is your first task, I will not score it. It won't be fair to you. There are errors that you did not intend to make. Let's fix the content presentation first. Then, in your next essay, I will make sure to score you already. Right now, I just want to point out the main problem points and suggest improvements to you.

Good work though. You should be able to speedily improve over time.

@Holt

Thank you Mr. Holt. I really appreciate that you let me understand what is my weakness in this essay. I would write my Task 1 shorter and try to select more important data rather than describing all of them.

About the part of my overview, I did write it and put it in my second paragraph after the introduction. Is there any important tips that I should know in order to get more score? Thank you for telling me the importance of summerizing an overview in this Task.

I will keep practicing my IELTS writing.

Sincerely,