IELTS Examiner / Practice Prompt Bank — GT & Academic / Academic Task 1
IELTS Academic Task 1: Map — Cities & change
Original practice prompt written in exam style — not a real exam question, and not a prediction.
The maps below show the centre of a town in 1990 and in 2020. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. The layouts are as follows. In 1990, a main road ran from west to east through the town centre. On the north side of the road, from west to east, there was a park, a library and a row of small shops. On the south side there was a large car park in the west, a market square in the centre and a post office in the east. By 2020, the main road had been closed to traffic and turned into a pedestrian zone. The park and the library remained in the same places, but the small shops had been replaced by a shopping centre. On the south side, the car park had been replaced by a block of flats, the market square remained, and the post office had become a café. A new bus station had been built just outside the centre, to the south-west.
Examiner focus: Organise by what stayed, what was replaced, and what is entirely new — pedestrianisation is the headline change.
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