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In many ways, describing a natural cycle or process is easier than charts and graphs.
Here are 12 tips to help you describe an IELTS life cycle diagram.
As with all Academic IELTS Writing Task 1 descriptions, write the question in your own words e.g.
Write an overall sentence here (or at the end) too e.g.
Life begins as an egg.
The caterpillar hatches.
It eats the shell.
It looks for leaves.
It grows.
It finds a twig.
It makes a chrysalis.
It comes out.
It sits on the chrysalis.
It transforms.
A butterfly emerges.
The wings expand.
It reproduces.
The life cycle begins again.
Look at all the examples above – they all need ‘s’ at the end of the verb (It grows, expands, hatches etc).
For variety, you could use ‘they’ – and then don’t put the ‘s’! (They grow, expand, hatch)
There aren’t many examples here, but instead of saying:
‘The butterfly lays an egg’ (Active)
you could say
‘An egg is laid’ (Passive).
These are the simple sequencing ones:
Try to make things link together between sentences by using:
If you’re aiming for Band 7+, adding descriptive words can make your writing more precise, and it helps increase your word count, which CAN be an issue in cycles.
Try to add a descriptive adjective wherever you can:
I show you how you can also do this when Describing changes to a plan.
This is probably the most difficult part – finding synonyms for quite technical words.
But doing this will make you stand out.
e.g. it hatches, emerges, wriggles free, comes out
This is similar to point 6, but what I mean here is that you should try not to just use verbs to describe the steps.
There is one good example here of an alternative:
It does not move = It is motionless.
This is another example of how you can avoid using verbs mechanically and how to add some variety to the text. e.g.
OK this is a bit controversial, and I’m not suggesting you should go off-topic or make up random scientific facts to meet the word count, but you can add details without worrying TOO much about how scientifically accurate they are.
For example, from the picture, it’s not clear how long each stage takes. So it is absolutely fine to say
The examiner will not worry too much about how true this is.
Read about natural cycles (carbon, water, nitrogen etc). They all follow the same pattern.
Watch YouTube videos – they will really help you get familiar with describing a cycle.
I have put together a collection of them in the Members Academy Writing Task 1 Course.
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