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Report Writing

This document provides guidance on how to structure an answer when summarizing an infographic or chart. It recommends paraphrasing the question, writing an overview paragraph that identifies the main trends without direct data references, and including 3 body paragraphs that discuss the main trend, differences, and conclusion. The document also provides tips on language usage, such as using complex sentences and words to analyze data.

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Ratul Hasan
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229 views4 pages

Report Writing

This document provides guidance on how to structure an answer when summarizing an infographic or chart. It recommends paraphrasing the question, writing an overview paragraph that identifies the main trends without direct data references, and including 3 body paragraphs that discuss the main trend, differences, and conclusion. The document also provides tips on language usage, such as using complex sentences and words to analyze data.

Uploaded by

Ratul Hasan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Structuring the answer

1. Paraphrase the question:


Paraphrasing is simply re-writing a phrase or sentence so that it has the same meaning, but
with different words. Let’s look at an example.
Example: Paraphrasing is one of the most important skills to learn before doing your IELTS
test.
Paraphrased: Prior to taking the IELTS test, mastering paraphrasing is one of the most crucial
things to do.
In the first paragraph, we should briefly explain what is happening in the info graphic.
We can get this information from the introduction to the task, but remember to
paraphrase what it says:

2. Write the overview.


An overview shows that we can identify the most important information from the graph or
chart and clearly identify overall trends and comparisons.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make
comparisons where relevant.
We, therefore, need to provide a short summary of the main features. We do this in the
overview paragraph by picking out 3-4 of the most significant things we can see and writing
them in general terms. It means we should not support anything we see with data from the
graph or chart, just write about what we can see visually.
How to select the correct features?
To understand this we have to think about the different types of graphs and charts we might
see. There are generally two different kinds of charts and graphs: dynamic and static.
Dynamic charts show data over time and static charts show data at just one point in time. This
will affect the type of data we select.
When we are looking at dynamic graphs we should be looking out for:
What does the data do from the start to the finish?
Do they generally go up or down or do they fluctuate?
Any significant difference from the general trend?
Overall increase/decrease?
Peaks/lows?
When we look at static graphs we should be looking for:
What are the highest/lowest values?
What are the most noticeable differences?
Any similarities?
Any significant exceptions?
3. Body :
In the first paragraph, identify the main trend in the info graphic and any similarities in
the data:

In the second paragraph, explain the differences:

Finally, give a clear conclusion:

Useful language
We should try and make a complex sentence by making a subordinate clause. Complex
sentences are sentences with more than one clause and they help increase our marks in the
grammatical range part of the marking criteria.
We can easily make a subordinate clause structure in the overview by joining two pieces of
information with the words ‘while’. ‘although’, ‘with’, ‘even though’, ‘whereas’ or ‘and’.
However, make sure we know the meaning of these words and how they are correctly used in
a sentence.
We need to use a variety of words and phrases to analyse the data.

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