In this article, you will learn about overviews for IELTS writing task 1. I’ll explain why they are necessary, where to put them in your essay, and how to write one effectively.
Do you really need an overview?
First of all, you need to realise that it is very important to include an overview in your task 1 report. That is made quite clear in the IELTS band descriptors. It says that to score band 7 or above for Task Achievement, your essay must “present a clear overview.”
In other words, a clear overview is absolutely essential if you want to score band 7 or higher. However, you need at least some kind of overview just to score band 6. The band descriptors say that for sort of essay, “a relevant overview is attempted.
Ok… But what is an overview?
Now that we understand we need to include an overview, we should ask what that actually means.
Basically, an overview is a sentence (or maybe two or three sentences) that summarises the main trend or highlights the most important aspects of the data. One sentence is usually enough, but for complex graphs or mixtures of both graphs and tables, you may need more than one.
Let’s look at an example.
In the above image, you can see a sentence highlighted in yellow. This is an overview of the data provided. I will repeat that sentence here in case the text is too small to read:
Europe suffered the most deterioration of its farmland and North America had the least.
To write this, I looked at the data provided (a pie chart and a table) and then decided what the most important parts were. Sometimes this is very easy and sometimes it is very difficult. However, don’t overthink it. Look for extremely high or low figures. Try to find big changes or huge gaps between different categories. When you find these sorts of data, you probably have a suitable overview.
Remember that your overview sentence should be part of your introduction (see the next section for more on this) and so it should complement that information. In the above example, my introductory paragraph was structured thusly:
- A very broad sentence that outlined the data.
- A more specific sentence that helped the reader to understand what exactly the data was about.
- An overview sentence that highlighted key information.
From there, you will go on to give details, but at this point your reader has a general idea of the data because your introduction has covered the main parts.
Here is another example:
Here, we can see an overview sentence for a task 1 question about two tables. Again, I have two sentences that introduce the data and then one that captures the most noticeable information.
What should you include in an essay overview?
As you can see from my examples above, you should look for things like these:
- High numbers
- Low numbers
- Big differences between numbers
- Notable changes
- Overall trends (such as all lines on a graph going up)
It can sometimes be harder when you have a map, for example. However, you can point out that some things stayed the same and everything else changed, or that there were only a few changes. Whatever stands out to you should suffice. If you noticed something quickly, it is probably appropriate for inclusion in an overview sentence.
Where should the overview sentence be located?
There are two approaches to this situation:
- Put the overview sentence inside your introduction.
- Put the overview sentence after your introduction.
As you can see from my examples, I strongly recommend using the first one. The reason is simple: Doing this shows that you are capable of grouping information and organising your essay intelligently.
Think about it. If you write one sentence that outlines the main idea of the chart, then start a new paragraph and write one sentence that gives an overview, then you have two single-sentence paragraphs!!!! This is really bad writing. It shows a total lack of development and organisation. I know that many IELTS tutors recommend this, but it really speaks for their lack of understanding.
It is much better to write a developed introduction that groups your ideas logically, then have several body paragraphs that similarly group and develop ideas. This will really help you in terms of both Task Achievement and Coherence and Cohesion.
You can read more about task 1 essay structure here.
More Examples
Here is another example of an effective overview sentence:
You can read more sample essays here:
