IELTS Writing Task 1: notice real examples

 I was reading The Economist yesterday, and I noticed these sentences:

America's total student debt, at over $1.5trn, is larger than the national borrowing of most countries. It has quintupled in size since 2004, overtaking both borrowing on credit cards and car finance.

I've highlighted a few useful features in the two sentences:

1. adding a statistic between two commas using "at"
2. a comparative: larger than
3. cohesion (referencing) using the pronoun "it"
4. quintupled = increased fivefold
5. overtaking: you may be able to use this word when describing a graph
6. comparing and contrasting using "both... and..."

If you're reading articles in English, look out for real examples of the types of description that you might use for an IELTS task.