How to write an Overview Paragraph

In IELTS WRITING Task 1, a well-developed overview paragraph will impress the examiner and lead to a higher BAND score.

The overview comes after the Introduction paragraph.

There are a few things that you need to be able to do in order to write the paragraph you need for a higher score:

Writing an Overview sentence for Task 1 is relatively simple.

I have provided the steps for you to follow, but you will still need to practice writing for different topics and read the questions carefully.

4 Easy Steps 

Step One

You need to be able to locate the overall change in the pictorial starting from the first year or day or month to the last

Step Two

You then need to locate the major trend or trends and the most significant features; these could be the highest and lowest number in the group.

Step Three

Next, you should consider the whole picture. If I wanted to paraphrase, I could say that you need to look at the big picture or look at the pictorial ‘globally’. In practice, for example, this means looking for differences between categories rather than exact numbers.

Step Four

And finally, you need to summarise the main trend, key feature or exception.

Too often, I see students get poor marks because they write figures in the Overview paragraph, and I strongly recommend that you do not.

You should always remember, the Overview refers to the ‘significant’ and not the ‘detail’

Have a look at the overviews I have written and see how I have related the graph to the points I made in 4 Easy Steps.

Q1 – The table below shows the number of prisoners in thousands in five countries between 1950 and 1980.

Here is how I would write an Overview for this chart:

“While the figures for imprisonment fluctuated over the period shown, it is clear that the United States had the highest number of prisoners overall. Great Britain, on the other hand, had the lowest number of prisoners for the majority of the period.”

Q2 – The graph shows the number of internet users in three countries over a decade.

“It is clear from the graph that the proportion of people who use the Internet increased in each country over the period shown. Overall, Mexico had the lowest percentage of Internet users, while Canada experienced the fastest growth in Internet usage.”

Q3 – The graph below shows the differences in wheat exports over three different economic areas.

“It is clear that Canada exported more wheat than Australia and the European Community for most of the period shown. However, while Canada’s wheat exports fluctuated and Australia’s fell, wheat exports from the European Community rose steadily.”

Q4 – The table shows the number of computer workstations available to students in different faculties at a university.

“It can be concluded from the given information that there are not enough computer terminals in comparison to the number of students in different faculties. It is clear that some faculties with a higher number of students have fewer computer terminals compared to some less populated faculties.”

Note: the information above is fictional and for practice purposes only.

Phrases to use in the Overview

Here I have provided a few phrases that can be used to start Overview paragraphs:

    It can be seen from the graph that…

    It can be concluded from the graph that …

    It is noticeable that …

    We can see that …

    It is clear that …

    Overall, …

Significant features

Remember, you are looking for significant features so all of the above phrases are suitable for the majority of Overview paragraphs.

It can be seen from the graph that… there are not enough computer terminals.

It can be concluded from the graph that .. there are not enough computer terminals.

It is noticeable that … there are not enough computer terminals.

We can see that … there are not enough computer terminals.

It is clear that … there are not enough computer terminals.

Overall, it is clear that, …there are not enough computer terminals.

Overall, …there are not enough computer terminals.

So there are my basic tips for writing an IELTS TASK 1 Overview

Finally, you can  go over to my Facebook page and join other students who are working towards the test.

Join my IELTS WRITING TASK 1 group for free practice.

All the Best,

Jonathan