The overview is probably the most important paragraph in the whole essay. In fact, as we will see later in this post, it is very difficult to score 7 or over without a good one.
An overview is simply a summary of the main or most important points in a graph, chart, process or map. It is normally 2-3 sentences long and should be the second paragraph you write in your essay. As we will see below, it also influences what you write in the rest of your essay.
Learn how to write a good one and you are much more likely to get a high score.
What does the examiner want?
An overview is one of the first things an examiner looks for because it shows them that you can identify the most important information from the graph or chart and clearly identify overall trends and comparisons.
If we look at the official marking scheme we can see that the word ‘overview’ is mentioned three times:
This means that to get at least a 5 for task achievement we must give some kind of overview. If we do not give any overview we will always get below a 5. If we select the appropriate data to include in our overview we get a score of 6 and if it is ‘clear’ we get a 7 for this part of the exam.
If you know how to select the appropriate data and you practice writing a clear overview, then you are likely to get the score you deserve in this section.
What is an overview?
To understand this we must look at the question. The question for academic task one is always the same:
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
We therefore need to provide a short summary of the main features. You do this in the overview paragraph by picking out 3-4 of the most significant things you can see and writing them in general terms. By general, I mean you do not support anything you see with data from the graph or chart, just write about what you can see visually.
Let’s look at an example:
Overall, I notice that there are 7 regions. Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America make up the majority, with North America being the largest. Africa, India, Latin America and China make up a very small proportion.
We can then include these things in an overview paragraph:
The pie chart is comprised of 7 regions in total with Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America making up the vast majority of global wealth. North America has the single biggest share and Africa, India, Latin America and China combined, only make up a small proportion.
As you can see, I have not talked about individual fractions or percentages, in fact I have not supported any of my features with data. Instead, I have just reported what I can see visually, without looking closely at the data. If you have to look at the data, then you probably won’t write a good overview.