Updated Dec. 8, 2013
Good Internet Sources of Materials to Study for Academic Task 1 (Writing Blog Page 7)
Introduction
Over the years, I have had a few people using my essay service who were aiming to get a Band 9 in Academic IELTS Writing. These have been Chinese IELTS teachers in China and Hong Kong who would gain a lot of prestige if they could get a perfect 9 score in IELTS. Some of them have asked me where to find good models or examples of Task 1 style language on the internet and I have given them general advice, without any specific internet links. Other people, such as those aiming for a 7.0 or higher, have also asked the same question.
On this page, I will post any good internet links for this purpose that I run across. These will be examples of graphs etc., with the English descriptions of these materials, written by native English speakers for educated English speakers to read. These examples were not originally written for students of English.
The items that I will list below are really only suitable for students who are already at Band 6.5 or higher standard for writing. Those students who are below that standard could try studying the materials that I list here but they will probably find it too difficult or too time-consuming. If you are under Band 6.5 level, I think you will benefit more by studying good quality textbooks for IELTS Writing and the model answers in the Cambridge IELTS practice test books.
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1. www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-volume-I.pdf
This document has a large number of graphs of different types, and tables of statistics, accompanied by descriptions in English. The document is a report on a series of tests that the organization called OECD carried out on high school students worldwide in 2012. The test is called PISA. You will find the material here to be a very detailed analysis of the graphs and statistics. So even if you are already a Band 8 standard student, studying this material will take up quite a bit of your time. In general, the analysis is not so mathematical as to use terms such as, "standard deviation" although this concept was incorporated into some of the graphs and tables.
The material is written at a high level of English, but is not as advanced as, for example, a Ph.D thesis or, as I wrote above, a highly mathematical analysis (although that has been done in preparing the report). This material is suitable for say, government officials concerned with formulating education policy or people doing advanced study at university in education.
OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, is similar to a United Nations organization but apparently it is quite separate from the United Nations. They produce a lot of reports like this. Their website is http://www.oecd.org/. You can also read more about this organization at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OECD.
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