IELTS Tips: "Overviews" in Task 1
In the IELTS Writing test, there are plenty of rules and guidelines that must be followed in order to get a high score. One of these criteria that my students have often asked about is the overview.
What is an overview? Why is it necessary? How do I write a clear overview?
Today we’ll take a closer look at these questions.
What is an overview?
An overview is a requirement of the Academic IELTS writing test in Task 1. This is the part of the test where you must write 150 words about a graph or diagram of some kind.
Regardless of the type of graph or diagram you are given, the task will ask you to “summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features and make comparisons where relevant.”
If you are following the 3-paragraph structure for Task 1…
…the overview is usually the second paragraph of your report, following your introduction and paraphrase of the question. This is where you choose 2-3 main features of the graph or diagram and talk about them in a general way. Then, in the final paragraph you will talk about those same points again, in more detail.
How do I write a clear overview?
The best strategy is to choose just 2 or 3 main points to mention from the graph/diagram and recount them in 2-3 sentences. If you aren’t sure what the “main points” are, try to look for obvious visual cues like the largest portion of a pie chart or a big spike on a line graph. You can also to identify a major similarity or difference between two categories.
This is also a great opportunity to use a subordinate clause. When you are talking about two main points in one sentence, conjunctions like whereas, while, and even though can be very useful for contrasting the information.
Lasty, make sure you don’t use any numbers or data points in the overview! Save those for the supporting data in your next paragraph. The overview is where we speak generally about the features of the graph. Look at these examples of sentences you might find in an overview.
“The growth rate of wages fluctuated greatly throughout the period.”
“The vast majority of the complaints came from the public while the remainder was split between several sources.”
“GDP grew exponentially for the IT industry whereas the service industry saw only minor growth.”
Why is an overview necessary?
In the official IELTS scoring criteria, the overview is mentioned frequently in the “task achievement” category. Task achievement measures how clearly and accurately you have answered the question. Basically, did you do what the instructions told you to do? As you can see here, having a clear overview is an essential part of raising your score in that category.
According to these criteria, without a clear overview it is very difficult to get a score above band 5.
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I hope you’ve learned a bit about overviews today and will include one in your next IELTS writing task 1. Good luck on your test and thanks for reading!
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