So now we come to the second part of the essay.

The overview.

Now, what is the overview and why is it so important?

Well, different teachers have different ideas about this, but but my starting point is if you look at the descriptors, the Band descriptors for task achievement, which are available online for task achievement in the Band seven, it says you have a clear overview in Band six, it says you have an overview.

Getting down to Bands five and four is no overview or you haven't talked about the most important things.

So essentially an overview is a summary if you like, of the main trends, the main features, the big picture about this data, about this graph.

What does it tell us?

You don't have time to describe everything.

You're not asked to describe everything that they don't want you to describe everything.

They want to see the skill of your being able to identify the most important points from this graph.

If you want to think about it this way, this might help.

It's like a conclusion, but it's a conclusion.

Before we write the body.

Now, you might be thinking, oh, that's a bit strange.

Why is he?

Why is he saying write the conclusion before you write the body.

This is my view and this is what I tell my students.

If you have a summary, it's the big picture, you can identify the most important things and if you can do that in the overview, then the overview will be your map or your guide for writing the body.

Now what I also say to my students is that when you write the overview, you want to think about the main changes or the main features.

Now I always say also that you don't include numbers here.

Don't talk about how much it increased from this to this or don't talk about which year.

Just a general comment about for example this one these two countries had an overall increase.

This country had a decrease.

This one had the biggest change, the smallest change and so on Will save the details.

For example in 2000 the cost was $43 and in 2015 increased to $68.

Save that detail for the body.

So just to reiterate then what's the overview.

It's a summary of the main features, the big picture um of the whole graph.

And it's a guide for you to write your body.

And it will save you time actually because it means when you come to write your body paragraph, you don't have to think about analyzing the data because you've already done that.

You only have to think about the language, you need to describe the changes.

Okay, so what I'd like you to do now is to take a minute or two minutes.

You can pause the video, look at the graph, study the bar chart and then think about what are the four or five most significant features or trends on this particular example that I've shown you today?

So you've had a look at the graph and you've been trying to find the main trends.

The main features for the big picture, no details and no numbers at this point, remember.

So let's see what I've identified.

What I think are some of the most significant features.

I'm gonna put them up on here.

You can compare it with your list.

So first of all I've got overall, I think overall is a very good word to start the overview anyway, so let's look main features then.

What's the first one?

I'm gonna put these in note form for now.

Okay.

Not in complete sentences.

Um so I've got Australia and highest, sorry, most expensive.

Yes.

For the whole period compared with the United States, which was the cheapest, difficult.

Yeah.

Over the 15 years.

There you go.

There's our synonyms in action.

You see, we don't need to repeat 2,000 2010.

All of these dates for the whole period.

Well, we know the reader knows which period you're talking about because you told them in the introduction which 15 years.

They know which 15 years because you told them in the introduction.

Okay, what's next?

So I've got all countries.

Yeah showed an increase for the period except Japan which of course showed a downward trend.

Um Japan also had the least or the smallest change in cost.

Okay.

As opposed to the UK which had the greatest change or increase let's say because we don't want to repeat the word change.

Mhm.

Okay.

And you could add that the the the U.

K.

And the United States followed very similar trend.

Or let's call it let's call it an upward trend.

Mhm.

Okay.

So these are the points which I've identified as being the most significant features you'll notice again just to reiterate no numbers, no dates in here because you're gonna use the numbers and the dates to expand all this information when you come to write the body.

Um and for the body paragraphs this is now a summary.

This is like a conclusion of all the most important points.

Now.

You've got this this is your map.

This is your guide for the body paragraph.

And you're gonna I think my advice is always to take the first point.

Start the body paragraph.

Start with this point expand.

It includes some numbers some details from the charts.

Take your point by point and describe in detail what kind of increased dramatic increase, slight change, et cetera.

And just take point by point and expand them and then you've got your body this will this will be a much quicker way to write your body because you don't have to think about analyzing the data.

You've done that here.

You just have to think about the language you need and filling in the numbers with with the with the cost in dollars and which years it was and so on.

And there are there are other videos available on a help dot com which you can look at for describing change and for writing body paragraphs.

So anyway, you can practice these strategies at home.

There's lots of tasks you can find online practice tasks, you can brainstorm synonyms and different ways of talking about the data.

Like we talked about for the introduction.

You can practice looking at the data and identifying the four or five most important features.

Time yourself.

Try and do it quickly.

It's as I said before, you know, you take two or three minutes to do this but it'll save you a lot of time during the exam.

And that's really what you need to be able to do because 20 minutes, 150 words is actually very difficult to do.

So try this at home practice And good luck when you come to write your test to see the rest of this lesson and for lots more help with academic coyotes to get a high score.

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