IELTS JOURNAL 26 Writing the General Overview Paragraph In your task 1 essay, you need to write a general summary of the information. Examiners call this the 'general overview' or overall trend. The summary paragraph can be written straight
after the introduction, but you can also put it at the end of the essay. One way to summarize graphs is to look for the overall change for example from the first year to the last year shown. You can also look for the main trends or the highest and lowest numbers.
As can be seen from the chart the biggest area of the total health spending, which is 31%, went into hospital care, while a sum of 23% belong to 'other spending. Surprisingly, nearly the same amount, which is 22%, is spent on doctors and clinical services. (47 words) 7%
10%
7%
22%
31%
23%
Total health spending Nursing home
Prescription drugs
Administartion
Doctors and clinical services
Hospital care
Other spending
It is clear that the total number of marriages per year fell between 1951 and 2009 in the UK. While the number of first marriages fell dramatically from the end of the 1960s, the figure for remarriages remained stable. (36 words) IELTS JOURNAL 27 Selecting Main Points When there is a lot of information (like in the bar chart below, it can be difficult to select the main points. Look fora change from the beginning to the end of the period. However, there is no overall trend because the figures fluctuate. So, we'll talk about the highest and lowest figures instead.
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