‫Hello, everyone, and welcome back to your next lesson.
‫Today, I'll be writing you a model answer for an ALS task, one writing question all about a bar chart.
‫Today, there will be no lesson, no it as there's a lot of information being covered, as well as a
‫lot of ideas that we'll be reviewing from previous lessons.
‫Please no down any language that you find interesting from this lesson.
‫First up, let's review the structure for answering a task.
‫One question.
‫The key reasons we use this force, that structure is so that you can score highly in task achievement,
‫which makes up 25 percent of the band descriptors, your first paragraph is the introduction, which
‫really is made of no more than two sentences and introduces your report to The Examiner.
‫Next is your overview, which you must include to score band six or higher, he you report the main
‫trends or the big picture of the visual information show.
‫Finally is our two detailed paragraphs where you go into a lot more detail to report the features of
‫the visual information show, I'll be using this structure today to write my model answer.
‫Let's take a look at the question I'll be answering now.
‫He is a typical alt writing bar chart, if we look at the title, it reads number of UK tourists visiting
‫Thailand and Greece in millions on the key, we can see the two countries are Thailand and Greece.
‫On the Y axis, we have the amount given in millions and on the x axis, we can see the four years from
‫2010 to 2013.
‫The chart shows numbers of UK tourists visiting two countries from 2010 to 2013.
‫Summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main features and make comparisons where relevant.
‫We've seen our bar chart and we have our question now, the first thing that I and you should do is
‫to make a short plan, the very same plan I showed you a few lessons ago.
‫Here is our plan structure, which is group one, group two and overview.
‫It's really important that you do this plan as it will help you to understand the chart or graph and
‫to make sure you answer the question properly and score highly on task achievement.
‫Let's take a look at my plan.
‫As you should remember, the groups tell me what I need to write in each detail paragraph, so as there's
‫only two countries, I've decided that Group one or detailed paragraph one will all be about Thailand,
‫where as my second detailed paragraph will all be about Greece.
‫For my overview section, I've identified that Thailand suffers a drop in the first year and steadily
‫increases throughout, whereas Greece fluctuates largely.
‫Now that I've looked at the bar chart in more detail and made a plan, it's time to move on to our first
‫paragraph, the introduction.
‫The key thing to remember here is that for the introduction, we simply need to paraphrase and reword
‫this part of the question.
‫That means I will have to use my understanding of synonyms to create my introduction.
‫And here is what I wrote.
‫The bar chart presents the amount of UK travelers visiting either Thailand, Greece over a four year
‫period.
‫Now, it's important to say that my introduction sentence really has very little difference between
‫the question's first sentence.
‫I've just used different vocabulary, to paraphrase.
‫Let's take a deeper look at how I did this and what vocabulary I changed.
‫Hey, I've identified three main changes that I made in my introduction, the first thing I changed
‫was chart shows into a bar chart presents.
‫I then changed numbers to amount and UK tourists to UK travellers, my last big change was in the final
‫part of the sentence.
‫I gave the name of the two countries and said it was over a four year period instead of 2010 to 2013.
‫I hope you can see that cylinder are super useful in creating your introduction.
‫Let's move on to our overview.
‫It's important to remember that the overview paragraph should not contain any percentages, numbers
‫or figures here, we will only quickly report the main trends that we can see in the visual information.
‫Generally speaking, your overview doesn't need to be any longer than between two to four sentences.
‫Let's take a look at what I wrote for my overview.
‫Overall, both countries saw drops and increases in tourism over time, although Thailand saw an initial
‫downturn, visiting travelers rose year on year thereafter.
‫Greece saw big fluctuations in the numbers of people arriving in their country throughout the period.
‫I began my overview with the word overall, and I recommend this as a great piece of vocabulary to start
‫your overview.
‫In my first sentence, I made a quick comparison between both countries and said they both saw drops
‫and increases.
‫My second sentence gave a quick summary of the major trends for Thailand and my third sentence summarize
‫what happened to Greece over the four year period.
‫And that's it.
‫That's all I wrote for my overview.
‫Now, here are some key points that you must remember when writing your own overview, it should not
‫contain any dates or figures and the overview gives the overall trends, or, as I like to call it,
‫the big picture, don't go into too much detail in this section of your report.
‫That's all for the overview before we move on.
‫Let's review our report structure.
‫So here we are and we've completed the introduction and we've just worked through the overview section
‫of our report.
‫So now it's time to move on to our two detail paragraphs.
‫The bar chart we're reporting on has two countries.
‫And as you may remember from our plan, detailed paragraph one will all be about Thailand, whereas
‫detailed paragraph two would describe the trends for Greece.
‫He is my first detailed paragraph now, it's very important in both detailed paragraphs to really describe
‫in detail all the facts and figures as there's only two countries in the bar chart I've described each
‫year with the major trends and differences.
‫In my first sentence, I gave the total of UK visitors to Thailand, but also made a comparison with
‫Greece, saying that Thailand total was higher where possible.
‫Do try and compare the data that you can see.
‫I then went on to say that in 2011 the number dropped by 500000.
‫Please do remember to give the correct figures as accuracy will help your mark.
‫Finally, I reported the total number of visits to Thailand from UK tourists increased by 500000 each
‫year, and I also went on to add the detail that the final figure in 2013 was Thailand's highest amount.
‫Let's see the second detailed paragraph for Greece.
‫I began my second detailed paragraph with a general statement saying that Greece's numbers fluctuated
‫largely throughout the four years.
‫I then started describing 2010 and gave the figure of 2.5 million.
‫Next, I use rocketed to describe the big increase in 2011.
‫Now you can see I said it was slightly under 4.5 million, whereas if I said the figure was 4.5 million,
‫I would lose marks, as that is not correct.
‫Importantly, I then describe the next decrease with the phrase more than halved, if you can do this
‫by saying halved, quartered or use percentages such as 50 percent, 30 percent, and you can use them
‫accurately.
‫It shows the examiner that you have a lot of confidence and fluency in English.
‫And quite simply, to finish my report, I gave the final figure for UK tourists in Greece and made
‫a quick comparison between Greece and Thailand.
‫So that's all for our model answer, reporting on a bar chart, we've seen our introduction, overview
‫and both detailed paragraphs.
‫I highly recommend reading through the full report, which is in an extra resource after this lesson.
‫Next up, we'll look at another model answer at this time.
‫The maps and processes.