What's new on IELTS with Fiona

Look at this article about the new James Bond film:

The film has pulled in 'just shy of' $320 million.

Meaning: 'just under'/ 'slightly less than'/ 'just short of'.

Learning points:

1) Reading about statistics will help you analyse data for Academic Task 1. One of my Members Academy students (Phong) reads statistics-based articles for pleasure, and his Task 1 tasks are outstanding.

2) You should round up numbers wherever possible when you're describing data. It's tedious for people to read detailed figures like $319, 999,999 million. Your job in Academic Task 1 is to help the reader understand the data, so there's no point quoting every single detail.