Do:
1. Look for key words in the task
The task rubric gives you a lot of information about what the chart shows. Pay attention to key words in the rubric that tell you what to write about. What exactly is the task showing, which place, measurement, time period etc.? Check if the chart shows percentages or numbers. Also double check if the chart shows changes rather than totals.
2. Refer to specific data points
Don’t just say, “the number of unemployed people increased”. Say, “the number of unemployed people increased from around 5% to 10% between 2008 and 2010”.
3. Look at the chart labels carefully
The chart labels, including along the bottom and side of the chart, may give you important information about the data in the chart. For example, they may say which regions, or time periods the data covers, or whether the chart shows percentages or numbers. It may seem obvious, but under exam pressure it’s easy to miss simple details.
4. Give an overview in your introduction
Don’t forget to give an overview of the main trends or features of the data in your introduction. When looking for these main trends ask yourself, what is immediately obvious when looking at the chart or data? You can begin your overview with, “Overall, the chart shows…” or other phrases such as “In general…”. Highlight one or two main trends or data points. Look at the example chart and it's overview below:
Overall, it can be seen that the largest number of tickets are usually sold between 9am and 12pm and that the weekends are far busier than weekdays.
5. Make comparisons
Don’t just describe the data in the chart, make comparisons. Look for differences and similarities between different lines and bars on the chart, different data points, or between different time periods.
Let’s look at a Academic Test Writing Task 1 and the body paragraphs from a model answer, and highlight examples of comparisons.
In 1991 the majority of people worked in the field labelled ‘other’. By 2001, this percentage had dropped from around 55% to roughly 45%. Meanwhile, the amount of employees working in service and sales increased significantly from around 10% to about 20% between 1991 and 2001. The service and sales sector became the second largest employer during this time.
The percentage of people that worked as technicians in 1991 was the smallest of the job types shown in this chart. By 2001, the percentage of technicians in the country had almost doubled so that this type of work employed the same number of people as the managers and professional job types, and amounted to approximately 15% of jobs.
As you can see the majority of the body paragraphs for this answer consist of comparisons!
6. Use a range of language for increases and decreases
You can change between verbs (to increase/ to decrease) and nouns (an increase/ a decrease). You can vary the adverbs (increase greatly/ significantly/ slightly), and you can use verbs or nouns with a stronger meaning (to rocket/ jump/ plummet/ slump).
7. Change between parts of speech and the passive/ active voice
Try to change the part of speech whenever you can. If the chart shows the consumption of different types of food, you don’t have to repeat the noun “consumption” all the time. You can also use the verb “consume”. You may also switch between the passive and active voice, saying, “people consumed” or “fruit was consumed”.
8. Practise your prepositions
Prepositions are always difficult but fortunately you don’t need to know many to describe charts. The key prepositions you need are for time periods (e.g. from 2001 to 2005)/ between 2001 and 2005), for noun + noun (an increase in something), for amounts (consumption increased by 20%) or ranges (e.g. consumption increased from 20 million litres to 25 million litres).
9. Where possible, use the past perfect tense
You can use the past perfect tense + by + time to show that something had happened before a particular point in time. For example, “the percentage of obese adults had increased from 10% to 20% by 2010,”.
10. Where possible, use the future perfect tense
If the chart shows data for a future time + by + time, you can use the future perfect to show that a change will have happened by this time. For example, “the percentage of people living in cities will have reached 70% by 2040.
Don't:
1. Talk about "the trend"
Many people make the mistake of focusing on “the trend”, especially in line charts. For example, it’s common to read, “the trend went up between 2005 and 2008”. This is not the best way. It is better to be more specific. If the chart shows how many hours people spend on the internet you could say, “the number of hours spent on the internet went up between 2005 and 2008”
2. Give personal opinions or make personal predictions
You shouldn’t give your opinion about what is good or bad in the data. Only describe it. For example, if the chart shows a large increase in the consumption of fruit between 2001 and 2005, you should say, “between 2001 and 2005 there was a significant rise in the consumption of fruit”. You should not add, “This was great for people’s health as eating fruit is part of a healthy diet”.
3. Mix up percentages and numbers
If the chart shows percentages you must talk about percentages or proportions, not numbers or amounts. Remember that a small percentage of a large group can actually be a bigger number than a large percentage of a small group.
4. Mix up changes with totals
Sometimes tables (or charts) show changes rather than totals. In these cases, you should be careful to talk about the changes, not absolute numbers. For example, in the task below we can see that there was a larger drop in consumer spending in Spain in 2020 than in Norway. We could not say that consumer spending was lower in Spain than Norway because Spain has a larger population than Norway, so total consumer spending was probably still much higher in Spain than Norway.
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