IELTS Writing Task 1 Process Diagram: How Bricks Are Manufactured

The diagram below shows the stages involved in the manufacture of bricks used in the construction industry, from the extraction of raw clay to the finished bricks ready for delivery. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words.

The process is linear, beginning with raw clay extraction and ending with finished bricks in storage, and consists of six sequential stages:

Clay is dug out of the ground at a quarry using heavy excavating machinery.
The clay is crushed and mixed with water in a pug mill until it forms a smooth, workable paste.
The paste is fed into moulds, or extruded through a die, and cut into brick-sized blocks.
The shaped bricks are placed in a drying chamber for one to two days to remove excess moisture.
The dried bricks are stacked inside a kiln and fired at a temperature of approximately 1000°C for several hours.
The fired bricks are left to cool before being packaged onto pallets and stored ready for delivery to building sites.

Examiner notes: why this is a band 9 response

Task Achievement

The overview sentence states that the process is linear and has six stages before any individual stage is described, and every stage named in the diagram (extraction, mixing, shaping, drying, firing and cooling/storage) is reported accurately and in the correct order, fully meeting the task of summarising the main features of the process.

Coherence & Cohesion

The response is organised into four paragraphs that group related stages together (overview; extraction and shaping; drying and firing; cooling and storage) rather than giving one stage per sentence. Cohesion is built through a range of sequencing markers (“begins when”, “once”, “after”, “next”, “finally”) instead of a mechanical repetition of “then”.

Lexical Resource

Precise, topic-specific vocabulary is used throughout (“pug mill”, “extruded through a die”, “drying chamber”, “kiln”), and process verbs are varied (“dug”, “crushed”, “fed”, “transferred”, “stacked”, “fired”) rather than relying on a single generic verb such as “made”.

Grammatical Range & Accuracy

The passive voice is used accurately and consistently for a process with no clear human agent (“is dug”, “is crushed”, “are stacked”, “are packaged”), alongside accurate time clauses (“once the paste has reached…”, “after shaping…”) that show a range of grammatical structures with no errors of tense or agreement.

Common pitfalls specific to this task

See commonMistakes above: the most damaging is omitting the overview, since a response that begins directly with stage one gives no sense of the overall shape of the process before the detail is presented.