She ignored the years at first. She just looked at the three lines. What was the story ?
In the past, Marta would have panicked. She would have written: In 2015, smartphone use was 1 hour. Television was 3 hours. Laptops were 2 hours. In 2016, smartphones went up to 1.2 hours…
On her fourth attempt, her tutor, a patient woman named Dr. Evans, handed her a thin, dog-eared book: The Key to IELTS Academic Writing Task 1 . The Key to IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
She didn’t cheer. She just sat down and opened The Key to the first page again. On the inside cover, she wrote:
When she finished, she read it aloud in her head. It wasn’t a list. It was a story. A story of a revolution in a pocket. Six weeks later, an envelope arrived. She opened it with shaking hands. She ignored the years at first
She didn’t list every year. She selected the most important data points: the start, the peak, the trough, the crossover.
Her problem wasn’t English. She could write beautiful, complex sentences about literature or history. Her problem was that she saw a line graph and froze. She would describe every tiny zigzag, every data point, like a child listing colors. “It went up. Then it went down. Then it went up again.” The result was a messy, confusing paragraph that ignored the big picture. In the past, Marta would have panicked
“The key,” Dr. Evans said, tapping the cover, “is not more English. It’s a new pair of glasses.”