IELTS Research Reports

The cognitive processes of taking IELTS Academic Writing Task 1As AWT1 tasks are a kind of writing activity, primarily knowledge telling, to reproduce meaningsalready depicted in the task prompts, candidates are to some extent able to copy and deploy the lexicaland syntactic components of the non-graphic prompts in their own writings. The importance and thevalue of the summary-like sentence in the non-graphic task instructions are clearly evidenced in theparticipants’ actual writings. Taking the scripts of Task A:UKCO2 as an example, we noticed that allthe 19 participants almost unanimously started their writing with this summary-like sentence or itsslight variation, e.g., “The line chart illustrates the trend of the UK CO2 emissions by different endusers between 1970 and 2004 in million tonnes carbon equivalent” (Participant A), “The graph in thepaper show UK CO2 emissions by end user from 1970 to 2004” (Participant B), “The graph in thepicture indicates UK carbon dioxide emissions by end user from 1970 to 2004” (Participant C), “Fromthe graph above, we can see that the UK CO2 emissions by end user has fallen down in 34 years”(Participant D), “It’s a graph which shows the UK CO2 emission by end user from 1970 to 2004”(Participant E). It is the same case for the other seven tasks too. Consistently, the participants startedtheir writings, with almost verbatim copy of this summary-like sentence from the task instructions,and then provided further details in subsequent paragraphs. Asked why they started with this copyingexercise at the interviews, all the participants said that there couldn’t be a better introductory sentencethan this authoritative one in the task instructions.4.2.4 Summary of the working modelThe working model of the cognitive processes for AWT1 tasks is presented in Figure 3. The verticaltimeline indicates the time allowed for AWT1 tasks, and the positions of the three key processes alongthe vertical timeline in the left column represent approximately the average duration of each process.The overlapping between “graph comprehension” and “re-producing graph comprehension in continuouswritten form in English” indicates that some students developed their understanding of the graphsthrough writing rather than following the linear process of graph comprehension and then writing. Theparticipants may also change and improve their understanding of the graphs, when they are writing.At this first stage of “comprehending non-graphically presented task instructions” and its associatedactivities, especially the summative introductory sentence. Comprehension of this sentence directlyaffects the next stage, i.e., graph comprehension, which is further governed by the display characteristicsof graphs, the characteristics of graph readers, and their interactions, plus “the purposes of understandingthe graphs and the cognitive demands of the writing tasks”. At the third process, i.e., re-producing graphcomprehension in continuous written discourse in English, the key aspects include writing and revisingthe main features of graphs, writing and revising the comparisons where relevant, writing personalinterpretations (sometimes), and constantly monitoring and self-evaluating their writings.IELTS Research Reports Volume 11391