23. IELTS Task 1 : "Using comparative language in a task 1"

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In the IELTS task 1 many people describe the details of the charts quite well, but the forget to make adequate comparisons. There are many ways of comparing in English, the most common being to use adjectives, comparative adjective adjectives, and superlative adjectives. Today, we will focus on some ways of comparing that will guarantee that we get a high mark in this part of the task 1. Let’s look at three cool ways to compare:

1. Comparing with adverbs

2. Add emphasis

3. Other ways of comparing

So firstly, we can use adverbs to make comparisons. There are three ways we could do this. We could:

i) use more/most + an adverb to make our comparison

China is developing more quickly than the US.

ii) Use some irregular adverbs like hard, fast, straight, late or quick

Men aged over 60 live 20 years longer than they did in the past.

iii) We could use irregular adverbs like badly/worse/worst or far/further/furthest

Italy did a lot worse than other countries when it came to the Corona Virus response.

Secondly, we could add emphasis in a couple of ways.

i) Use words like even, far, a great deal, or a little.

Children showed much greater increases in weight than expected.

ii) Use words like slightly, considerably, or significantly + comparative

The numbers for 2003 were significantly higher than those for 1999.

Thirdly, we could use some other ways to make comparisons.

i) We can say things are the same with as + adjective/adverb + as

Sweden is as likely as Germany to achieve their economic goals for 2020.

ii) We could add meaning by using just, nearly, half, three times etc.

Australia was almost as successful at the Olympics as Canada.

iii) We could say things are different with not as + adjective/adverb + as

The new vaccine may not be as effective as the older one.

iv) We can show the change is occurring over time be repeating the comparative.

Pollution levels seem to be getting lower and lower each year.

v) We can also use the + comparative + the to show things change over time.

The longer a person works, the better is their retirement.

Now lets take a look at a simple IELTS task 1 and add some comparisons to it. We will start directly with the details and comparison section.

"Looking in more detail we can see that while burglaries started much higher than car theft and robberies, between 2004 and 2007 they decreased more quickly than the other two types of crime. However, by 2008 car theft crimes began to show much greater numbers than either burglaries or robberies. By 2012, there were more than twice as many car thefts as burglaries. Robberies were more than five times less likely to happen than car thefts. Overall, burglary fluctuated greatly compared to the other two types if crime."

This extract uses a number of cool comparative structures. Let’s take a look:

1. much higher = much + comparative adjective

2. more quickly = more + adverb

3. much greater numbers = much + comp. adjective + noun

4. twice as many ... as ... = twice + as + many + as

5. less likely = less + adverb

6. fluctuated greatly = verb + adverb