A process description in IELTS Academic Writing Task 1 is easy to follow when the reader knows from the first sentence how many stages there are, where the process begins and where it ends. From there, it’s easy to see where one step stops and the next one starts. Three techniques help here: an overview, sequencing words and the passive. Below you’ll find a task with a diagram, a typical weak extract and how to fix it. In LetsWords, you practise this on your own answers: feedback on all four criteria shows where the reader loses track, and you revise the text yourself.
The task: how black tea is made
The official description of Task 1 names describing the stages of a process as one of the possible tasks. Here’s a task of that kind:
The diagram below shows the stages in the production of black tea.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Write at least 150 words.
The weak extract: the stages are there, the order isn’t
At first, workers pick young tea leaves by hand. They put the leaves on racks for 12 to 18 hours. A machine rolls the leaves. The leaves stay in a humid room for one to three hours and turn brown. Hot air dries the leaves for about 20 minutes. The tea is sorted by leaf size. They pack it into boxes and tea bags. This is how black tea is made.
All seven stages are there, and the text matches the diagram. But swap the second and fifth sentences, and nothing in the text will tell you the order is broken. The reader has to check every sentence against the diagram. The last sentence only repeats the task, and there’s no overview: the reader never finds out how many stages there are in total.
LetsWords feedback example: overview, sequencing words and the passive
LetsWords feedback is tied to the sentences in your answer. In this extract, it flags three places, and each one makes the order harder to see.
Task Achievement: no overview. The reader doesn’t know how many stages to expect, where the process begins or where it ends. An overview answers exactly these three questions in one sentence, without the details of individual stages.
Coherence and Cohesion: the transitions between stages aren’t signalled. The order is easier to follow when the key transitions are marked with sequencing words. You don’t need one before every stage, though: linking words used mechanically get in the way too. Useful options include:
- the start: first, to begin with;
- the middle: next, then, after that, afterwards, once + a completed action: once withering is complete;
- the end: finally, in the final stage.
Don’t open the first stage with at first: it means “in the beginning” and hints that something will change later. The at first exercise covers this mistake.
Coherence and Cohesion: the focus keeps jumping from one doer to another. Workers pick, a machine rolls and hot air dries are all grammatically correct. But the subject changes in almost every sentence (workers, they, a machine, hot air), even though the diagram is all about the tea leaf. Who picks it and dries it doesn’t matter here. What matters is what happens to it, and the passive keeps the attention on the leaf: workers pick the leaves → the leaves are picked. If the diagram gives the method, keep it: by hand, by machine. Where the leaf changes by itself, you don’t need the passive: the leaves turn brown.
The corrected extract, with the overview and the first three stages:
Overall, the production of black tea consists of seven stages, beginning with the picking of fresh leaves and ending with the packing of the finished tea.
First, the top two leaves and the bud of each shoot are picked by hand. Next, the leaves are spread on racks and left to wither for 12 to 18 hours. Once withering is complete, the leaves are rolled by machine.
The result: the order is clear without the diagram
Now you can read the text without looking at the diagram. The first sentence gives the number of stages, the start and the end. The transitions are marked with First, Next and Once, and Once withering is complete links directly back to the previous stage. When it comes to the stages, the subject is always the leaves, so the reader follows them instead of a changing cast of workers and machines.
Check yourself: describe stages 4 and 5 in the same way. Use after that and once, the passive for what is done to the leaf, and the active voice for the leaves darkening: the leaves turn brown. If the order is clear without the diagram, you’ve got it right.
What LetsWords gives you
Describing three stages from a model is easy. It’s harder in your own answer to a new diagram, when you’re advised to spend no more than 20 minutes on the whole task. LetsWords brings this practice together in one place:
- Practice tasks. The bank has hundreds of IELTS Writing tasks, including process diagrams. You write about new data instead of polishing one example.
- A task guide for this format. Open it before you write: it explains how to approach a process diagram and structure your answer.
- Feedback on your answer across all four criteria. Comments are tied to your sentences: where the overview is missing, where a transition between stages gets lost, where the focus drifts away from what matters. The feedback shows what to fix first, and you do the rewriting yourself: that’s how the skill sticks.
- Criterion practice. If you keep losing the order, practise Coherence and Cohesion on a short passage without rewriting the whole answer.
Afterwards, finally and at first are covered in the free LetsWords exercises, each with a common mistake and an answer check. For words like these to come to you naturally in the exam, add them to your own collection in the vocabulary trainer. You recall each word from a hint in your native language and write a sentence with it, LetsWords points out mistakes and explains the correction, and spaced repetition brings the word back in later sessions.
Start IELTS Writing Task 1 practice in LetsWords: describe processes from new diagrams, get feedback on all four criteria and revise your answer until the order is clear on first reading.