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Đây là một đoạn bài giảng mẫu trong Lesson 5 của khóa IELTS Writing Task 1

Alright everyone, today we’re moving on to Lesson 5: How to write an overview for IELTS Writing Task 1.

So first of all, what exactly is an overview? Well, it’s simply a summary of the main or most important points in a chart, process, or map.

Now, where do we put it? You can put it after your introduction. So the basic structure looks like this:

Introduction then Overview then 2 Body Paragraphs.

So, how do we actually write an overview?

It really depends on the type of Task 1 question you’re facing. In this course, we’ll learn how to write overviews for four key types: dynamic chart, static chart, proces, and map.

First, dynamic chart.

1. If it’s a dynamic chart (something changing over time):

What are dynamic charts?

Well, dynamic charts are charts that show change over time. They show you how things increase, decrease, fluctuated or remain the same over a certain period.

So whenever you see a time axis — like 2000, 2005, 2010 at the bottom of the chart — that’s your signal: this is a dynamic chart.

If it’s a dynamic chart, to write a good overview, ask yourself 2 questions:

👉 Question 1: Do the figures generally go up, go down, fluctuate or remain stable over time?

👉 Question 2: Among all the categories, which category is the highest and which one is the lowest?

Now let’s practise with this graph. It shows the number of participants in different activities at a social centre in Melbourne from 2000 to 2020.

You’ve already analysed this graph with me in the previous lesson, so I’m not going to go through every line again. Instead, let’s jump straight into the overview.

Remember our two questions?

• What’s the general trend?
• And among all the categories, which one is the highest and which one is the lowest?

Okay, let’s tackle Question 1: What’s the general trend?

Well, if we look at amateur dramatics, we can see it clearly went down over the years.

Then, table tennis and musical performances — both of these went up.

And martial arts? That one pretty much stayed stable, with only small changes here and there.

So overall, we’ve got one activity declining, two activities increasing, and one that stayed the same.

Alright, now let’s move on to Question 2: Among all the categories, which one is the highest and which one is the lowest?

If we look across the whole period, film club is always at the top. So, the big picture is very clear: film club remained the most popular.

Alright, so we’ve answered two questions. Now let’s put everything together, and we’ll have an overview like this:

‘Overall, film club consistently attracted the highest number of participants throughout the period. While amateur dramatics declined markedly, table tennis and musical performances recorded the most significant growth, whereas martial arts figures remained relatively stable.

And that’s it — a complete overview in just two sentences, covering the key trends, and the highest and lowest.

So, that’s how we write an overview for a dynamic chart — the type that shows changes over time. Pretty simple, right? Just focus on the overall trends, and identify the highest and lowest.

Now, we’re going to move on to the next type: the static chart.