Useful language for IELTS Writing Task 1 - describing trends

Many students - and even some IELTS teachers :-D - find Writing Task 1 of the Academic Module very difficult.  I did too, until I discovered the brilliant IELTS-Simon's advice about how to approach it.  His method is very simple and extremely effective - you can find the relevant part of his website here.  Most other books and websites make the whole matter far too complicated.  

They also give the impression that the only way to get a high score in this part of the test is to use incredibly complicated language, and this is simply not true.  You need to have a relatively small amount of vocabulary at your fingertips - that is, ready to use without having to think too hard about it.  You need to use it in the appropriate places, and you need to use it accurately.  

Perhaps the most useful area of vocabulary to learn for IELTS Writing Task 1 is how to describe trends.  You often have to describe a line graph with several lines moving up and down over a period of time, and there are two easy ways of doing this - the 123 method, and the ABCD method.

Here's the 123 method:

1	2	3
The price  The population The number of ....	decreased fell dropped went down	gradually slowly rapidly quickly slightly somewhat significantly substantially dramatically
	increased rose went up
	remained stayed	the same

To avoid repeating the same type of sentence over and over again, you can also add in some sentences using the ABCD method:

A	B	C	D
There was a	gradual slow rapid slight significant substantial dramatic	decrease fall decline drop increase rise	in price in the population in the number of ...

You don't even need to memorise all of this vocabulary if time is short and you are struggling - the most important thing is to learn a few of these, but learn them thoroughly.  Learn a way of saying that the numbers go up, that the numbers go down and that the numbers stay pretty much the same, plus a couple of adverbs (123 method) and adjectives (ABCD method).  

Learning a few phrases really well, so that you can use them confidently and accurately, will help you focus on the really important part of Task 1 - understanding what the data means, then identifying the most important trends in your general overview paragraph, and describing the trends in more detail in the rest of the report.