IELTS Writing Task 1: Mother Tongues

The table presents how many people speak mother tongue languages₁. Overall, the data illustrates that Chinese language has the biggest number for native and not native₂ speakers comparing with other languages, while there are more people who speak English mostly not native₃. Described numbers presented₄ in millions.

There are three first languages presented in the table before English language. The highest figure out of three shows Mandarin Chinese with 900 and 190 native and non-native people respectively with the total number of 1, 090. Other two are Hindi and Spanish, the former constituted 370 mother tongue speakers and 120 as an aditional₅ language with similar total numbers of 490 and 420 respectively.

Turning to other three languages in the table, the biggest figure illustrates English language which is the second chosen language after Chinese at 942 people in total included 339 native and 603 non-native speakers. Other languages: Arabic and Portuguese have similar numbers of people who speaks₆ those. The first one has 206, the second 203 natives, while learners of these languages are 24 and 10 people₇ respectively. Arabic spoken₈ by 230 and Portuguese by 213 people in total.

(190 words)

1. Not only does it present this information, but also the number of non-native speakers and as well as the total number. Secondly, ‘mother tongue language’ is excessive as ‘tongue’ and ‘language’ mean the same thing. Go with ‘mother tongue’, ‘mother language’ or ‘native language’
2. ‘Non-native’ would work better here
3. “… while there are more people who speak English non-natively/as non-native speakers”
4. “The described numbers are presented in millions of people“
5. Spelling mistake: “additional”
6. People is plural, so: “people who speak“
7. “24 and 10 people” sounds a bit strange, even though we did mention that we would be talking about million in the introductory paragraph. I would suggest dropping the word ‘people’.
8. Auxiliary is missing here: “Arabic is spoken”