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Describing Graphs and Charts

The document outlines learning objectives for students to develop skills in analyzing and describing graphs and charts. It provides specific verbs, adjectives, and phrases to effectively communicate changes in data over time. An example analysis of population growth in Canada illustrates how to apply these skills in academic writing.

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princejamil455
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11 views2 pages

Describing Graphs and Charts

The document outlines learning objectives for students to develop skills in analyzing and describing graphs and charts. It provides specific verbs, adjectives, and phrases to effectively communicate changes in data over time. An example analysis of population growth in Canada illustrates how to apply these skills in academic writing.

Uploaded by

princejamil455
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Describing Graphs and Charts

Learning Objectives:
The students will be able to:
1. To develop the linguistic skill to analyze and describe the graphs and charts in an investigative
style of composition.

How to analyze and describe a graph/chart:

Often in academic writing, learners use information and facts presented in charts and graphs to
support the topic sentence of their paragraph. Often, the data presented in a graph or table show
change over time. There are – specific verbs, adjectives and adverbs that can help you describe
these changes. For example:
Verbs for describing how data have changed:
• to increase • to remain (unchanged) • to decrease
• to go up • to be steady • to go down
• to rise • to plateau • to decline
• to climb • to drop
Adjectives and adverbs to describe how fast the change occurred:
• sharp • steady • sharply
• dramatic • gradual • dramatically
• significant • slight • significantly

List of phrases to describe charts/graphs

The pie chart is about ...

The bar chart deals with ...

The line graph (clearly) shows ...

The slices of the pie chart compare the ...

The chart is divided into ... parts.

It highlights ...

... has the largest (number of) ...

... has the second largest (number of) ...

... is as big as ...

... is twice as big as ...


... is bigger than ...

more than ... per cent ...

only one third ...

less than half ...

The number ...


increases/goes up/grows by ...

The number ...


decreases/goes down/sinks by ...

The number ...


does not change/remains stable

I was really surprised/shocked by the ...

So we can say ...

Example of the analysis of a graph

Population growth in Canada

This graph shows the growth of the population in Canada from 1978 to 2009. It is taken from the
website about Statistics in Canada.
There are three graphs in the chart. The green graph shows the total growth of the population, the
black one deals with the migrated people in Canada and the blue graph shows the natural
increase of the population. In 1988/89 there was an enourmous growth. In the following years
the total growth went down to about 250,000 in 1998/99. From that time on the Canadian
population has been gradually growing again although the natural increase slows down. So we
can say that the growth of the population in Canada is based on migration.

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