Unit 2: Writing Task 1 – How to paraphrase thread in Writing Task 1

Paraphrase is a very useful and necessary skill, because in both Task 1 and Task 2, you need to paraphrase the opening sentence. This is especially easy in Task 1 because at the beginning of the lesson you can immediately navigate the small parts to paraphrase.

Basically, the steps to paraphrase 1 at the beginning of Task 1 are as follows:

Step 1: show = give information about = illustrate = demonstrated

Step 2: If the title says “the chart” then write more specificly, becoming “the first chart” or “the bar chart”

Step 3: If the board has many different “objects”, you should specify how many objects.

Example of speech:

The chart below shows the amount of money per week spent on fast foods in Britain.

See my underlined part? Please write down what the fast foods are. I look at the chart there are 3 types of fast foods so I will rewrite them: 3 different types of fast foods.

Step 4: Quantitative words like amount, number, population, percentage turn into how many / how much and vice versa.

Step 5: If you have a number of years (for example, 1900 – 2015), you can write from 1900 to 2015, or use the very dangerous phrase over the course of 115 years starting from 1900.

So the following we have to paraphrase:

– from “show”

– from “chart”

– common noun

– amount

– time

Let’s paraphrase some threads, for example, paraphrase the problem above first:

The chart below shows the amount of money per week spent on fast foods in Britain.

=> The bar graph ILLUSTRATES how much money people in Britain spent per week on 3 different types of fast food.

I just paraphrase 4 parts as mentioned above, it’s simple right? Do some more examples for familiar hands:

1) The charts below show the results of a survey of adult education. The first chart shows the reasons why adults decide to study. The pie chart shows how people think the costs of adult education should be shared.

=> The bar graph demonstrates 7 different reasons why adults pursue education at their age.

=> The second chart shows how the surveyees think their education expenses should be allocated.

2) The table below shows the consumer durables (telephone, refrigerator, etc.) owned in Britain from 1972 to 1983.

=> The table illustrates the ownership rate of different home appliances in Britain over the course of 11 years starting from 1972.

This has to be explained a little bit. When I read the term consumer durables, I didn’t understand what it was, never seen it. But looking at the list, you can see the fridge, TV, washing machine, etc. so it’s similar to home appliances.

Many of you wonder what the ownership rate is like this. In the table it shows how many% of households own each of the listed items, so I spawned the ownership rate cluster. If you want to look more closely, you can write the changes in ownership rate, because every time period has changed.