reach the peak

Reaching a peak in IELTS Task 1

In general, the 6pm news reached its peak for almost 5 million viewers per day in the first month.

This is actually quite communicative and in IELTS this sentence might give you a satisfactory score for TA. However, the language problems would leave you with a much lower score for GRA and for CC. (What are TA, CC and GRA?)

  1. It doesn’t make sense to signal this statement In general, because it’s not general. It features data values taken from the x and y axes of a line graph. Better to put this information in the detail section of your essay and signal it In detail.
  2. You need to treat reach a peak as a phrasal verb. If you want to change the tense – and the tense will most likely be past simple tense – then you can modify reach (past: reached a peak). Otherwise don’t mess with a and don’t mess with peak.
  3. The preposition ‘for’ is not right.

If you really are making a general statement, do this:

In general, the popularity of the 6pm news reached a peak in the first month.

If you want to mention detail, then do this:

In detail, the 6pm news reached a peak of almost 5 million viewers per day in the first month.

Pay careful attention to this pattern:

something + reached a peak (+ of + value x) (+ time expression)

If you don’t believe me, check out these examples!

And whatever you do, don’t write reached the peak! That applies to climbers only, where the refers to the mountain they happen to be climbing at the time!