Welcome to My IELTS Classroom, the podcast where two English experts talk all things IELTS.
I'm Shelley Cornick.
And I'm Nick Lowney.
And today we are looking at bar charts.
What's the difference between a compare bar chart and a change bar chart?
How should you approach each of them?
And what makes a bar chart that has got age groups completely different?
Good evening Nick.
Good evening.
How are you?
I'm not too bad this weekend.
It's been quite a nice weekend.
22 degrees yesterday.
Was it?
Yeah, we went for a nice long walk in the woods with young Charles.
Wow, that's proper, proper spring slash summer weather.
Yeah, it was nice.
It was really nice.
It was quite rainy here, I have to say.
It is England.
Well, that's true.
But I'm still hopeful that next weekend for the bank holiday, the sun will come and the glory will be restored.
I've had a difficult week, Nick.
Mm-hmm.
I, last week, out of nowhere, got one of those migraines.
I don't know if you ever get migraines, but you know I get the type of migraine where it's like the universe is split and your vision you can't see properly.
Yeah, I've had them before.
It's terrible.
Have you?
It's horrible, yeah.
And I was at the supermarket and I thought, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to drive home.
And I managed to get home.
And what I do when I get them is I just go straight to bed.
And it was about two o'clock.
And I remember that two things happened before I properly woke up again.
One was that there was an Amazon delivery.
Ooh.
And I put my arm around the door to take the package.
And the other was that, did I tell you last week I'm cat sitting for our friend?
You did tell me, yeah.
Yeah.
So Mal, the cat that I'm cat sitting for, there was a crash.
And the door slams to the en suite bathroom and I had to open it because she was scratching to get out.
So those two things happened somewhere in the three hours when I was asleep.
And then when I woke up at half past five, guess what?
Cat in the bath?
No cat.
Oh dear.
She just was not anywhere.
I looked.
No, it was not good at all.
I was spent, you know, the first 10 minutes sort of waking up, not feeling great, thinking oh she must be here somewhere.
She's probably asleep.
Had a quick look around, thought, oh, I'll check properly in a minute.
Half an hour later, I had checked everywhere.
Still no cat.
So then I called the vet and I said, what do you do when a cat escapes?
And they said, is she microchipped?
And I said, I don't know, probably, but I don't want to tell the owners because they're on holiday.
So she said well, look if the cat has got.
She said it's probably still in the house, but if it has got out, usually they don't go very far.
They go about 500 meters.
That's quite far to be honest.
Well, that's just what I was thinking.
In any direction.
Yeah.
And I'm like, there's a big road behind me.
In front of me is a huge grass area with, you know, foxes on it.
So I went to the right first and knocked on all the doors.
Met some lovely people.
They put me onto the local sort of roads WhatsApp group.
I put a picture of her and said, lost.
And then I went left and I knocked on all the doors and I spoke to three or four people and I got to the end.
And then I'm like well, I've knocked on every door.
I've looked under every car.
And as I was walking back to my house, One of the neighbours, this lovely older lady called Jackie, just came out with her garden holding her.
Oh dear.
And she'd been in the back in her garden shed.
Oh.
And she'd only spotted her because her cat had like, all its hair had gone up and her cat had started hissing.
Oh dear.
So she thought there must be something in there.
Yeah.
So I still don't understand how she got out of the apartment, because I've been keeping all the doors and windows closed, except for the en suite.
So she must have seen this chance for freedom and...
Bid for freedom.
She struck out for gold.
She was very, very unrepentant.
She did not care about the stress that she caused me.
She just came in and started meowing for some food.
And that is why you should get a dog.
Exactly.
So there we go.
So honestly, then my headache came back and it lasted another two days.
I play Mao.
Le Mao.
Le Mao, exactly.
So that was my week.
What we are doing today, we are not a cat podcast, ladies and gentlemen.
We are an IELTS podcast.
And today, in response to one of our students, right?
So I always like these episodes.
One of our students has asked if we could possibly do a review of bar charts.
I'm going to be honest, Nick.
I was a little bit reluctant to make this episode because of all of the charts, or the possible types of charts you can get in the exam.
Bar charts offer the widest range, I guess, of types of description.
It's the selfridges of IELTS questions.
It is.
It is the department store of IELTS questions.
But I've tried to do this.
So what I would say is if you are new to IELTS, this is probably not the best episode to begin with.
Okay. um i would go back and maybe have a look um we have a general task one episode don't we exactly so exactly so either go to our main um well first thing i would do is if you are new Go to our main website, www.myieltsclassroom.com and watch the first three episodes of our Academic Task 1 course.
They are free and they will give you the basics.
I think you really need that.
Then, I agree Nick, go back and have a listen to the podcast Nick and I did about finding key features for change charts.
That would be a really, and you know the next level up.
Once you've done that, you might even want to listen to our line, our first line graph episode um, and then come to this one.
So you know, obviously you're welcome to stay, but if you start finding yourself feeling a bit confused um, That's only because you might be missing some sort of foundational information, right?
So it's nice to jump in at the deep end sometimes, but it's easier to go step by step.
So maybe pause the lesson now and go and do that.
But I know we've got a lot of long-term listeners.
I know we've got a lot of teachers who listen to this.
So-
This is for you.
So Nick, I think the way we'll do this today is I will be asking you to play the role of student, right.
So you are the voice of our listeners, okay?
So every time I ask Nick a question at home, you should hopefully be answering that question too.
All right?
Yeah.
Also, like any of the podcasts we have done for Academic Writing, Task 1, where we're talking about maps, we've done a maps one as well, haven't we?
And charts.
It is very, very difficult to follow these episodes unless you can actually see the chart in question.
So...
Just like last week, I managed to produce a blog post for our listening matching questions, because the students needed to see that.
I will 100 by tomorrow morning or while you're listening to this, have a blog post which, at the very least, just has the images of these charts on them.
There probably won't be much text because I won't have much time, but you're going to have to have that open.
So go to blogmyiotsclassroomcom dot com.
Now open it up.
Look at click on bar charts.
If you're listening in the week of what's it tomorrow, the 25th of April, that was my mum's birthday.
If you're listening on the 25th of April this week, it'll be the newest podcast or the latest blog post.
If you're listening in the future, scroll down and find the 25th of April.
But you're definitely going to need that for today.
Okay.
So we're going to start with the sort of advanced basics.
All right, Nick.
So, In general, like many different charts actually bar charts can either be used to show comparisons or they can be used to show change.
So my...
First quite simple question to you listeners at home and Nick, is you know, if you go into the exam and you open up your writing paper and you can see a bar chart, how will you know if your bar chart is showing you changes or if it's asking you just to make comparisons?
Well, I guess if it's changed, it's going to be showing you the same thing from different years.
Exactly.
Okay.
It is as simple as that, right?
Obviously, for there to be change, we need change to know the same information in different years, don't we?
So the first thing i would do is just have a look at your bar chart.
Is it showing you different years or is it all one thing in the same year?
I mean essentially, if there are no years, you know that it's a compare chart okay, so Always have a look first of all.
Is this a change chart or is this a compare chart?
That is an extremely important question because it's going to completely change the type of language that you use.
Yep.
So if it's a change chart, we're going to be talking about increases.
Decreases, you know, remain stable, things stayed the same.
If it's a compare chart, we can't use any of the language for increase or decrease.
We can just talk about things being higher, lower, more or less or equal.
Huge difference.
So...
You're going to definitely check if it's a change chart or if it's a compare chart.
However, that's only the first step in understanding the type of chart you've got.
There are actually a couple of different types of charts.
So that's actually what I want us to talk about and look at today, Nick.
So we're going to start with change and we're going to start with what I would consider a really classic change.
Change chart.
So, even though I've just told everybody to go to the blog and open up to look at the chart, which I hope everybody's done Nick, very briefly, could you just describe what you can see here for this particular change chart that we're going to look at first?
So the title is the chart below shows the percentage of adults who received qualifications from a range of education providers in three years and the three years that we've got in 1981.
1991 and 2001 and it's education providers in canada we've got a high school which is showing growth over the three over the three different time periods trades which has stayed exactly the same college which has also grown and then university which has also grown as well Fantastic.
You did that wonderfully.
So I guess the key thing here, so you know for this type of chart what we've got, we've got the four items as you just described high school, trades college, university and for each of those items, so it doesn't have to be those, it could be other things as well.
But the key thing is, For each of those items, we've been given three pieces of information, each one for a different year, haven't we?
Usually for this type of chart, you've got four, five, six items at the bottom.
I'm thinking, for example, there's a Cambridge chart which talks about export earnings, different sectors that earn different amounts of money.
And then you're either usually given two years.
Or three years.
That tends to be.
So here we've got three periods.
Sometimes it's only two.
If you've only got two periods, you'll probably have more items at the bottom.
So, you know, for the export ones, there is only two years.
So for that one, like I said, there's five or six categories of exports, not four.
But this is what I would call your bog standard average change chart, right?
So you've got the four or five items and then you've got two or three data points giving us different years.
As you've said, Nick.
So the first thing you did which was great is because this is a change chart, the first thing you're going to want to do.
You know, everyone who's listening to this should know what an overview is.
For your overview.
For any change chart, it doesn't matter if you've got a bar chart that shows different years, pie charts that show different years, line graphs.
You definitely want to always start by looking for one sentence that can summarize the change that happened in all of the items.
OK, so I think that's the mistake students make when they look at a bar chart.
The first thing they often do is students will look at highest and lowest.
That's great.
And we are going to use that information.
But that should not be the first thing you look for.
The first thing you want to do is to see what is happening to everything in terms of increases and decreases.
Based on what you said a moment ago Nick, if you look at this chart, what would your key feature for change be?
For this chart, do you think?
That three of them have grown and one of them hasn't.
Exactly.
So in one sentence, we'd probably want to say something like It's the trend, isn't it, from all education providers?
Increased with the exception of trade.
So it's one sentence that is summarizing all of the change that we see.
We're not talking individually about the different education providers.
No, we're not saying you know, high schools increase, college increase, university increase.
No, we're saying they all increased with the exception of trades, which remain the same.
So for any bar chart that's showing years, you know if you've got two or three years, first thing you want to do.
If you're on the paper-based test, you can do this with your pencil, just mark.
Which ones increase?
Which ones decrease?
What pattern can you see?
What is the general trend that's happening?
Once you've done that, then for your second key feature because we always really want a minimum of two key features, a maximum of three then we can just do the you've done the hard thing, once you've done the change right.
Then we can just look at highest, lowest.
So for this chart, Nick, I mean, what would we say in terms of who gave the most points?
Well, we'd have to mention high school because even in all three years, it was the highest.
Exactly.
So definitely we're going to lock in high schools, right?
Of the two, highest and lowest, which is the most important trend to give?
Highest for sure.
Absolutely.
Right.
I mean, the lowest you can mention, but you know, lowest are probably not very significant.
Okay.
If you do want to mention the lowest, you can.
Why have we got a small problem for this particular chart, Nick?
Because in 1981, it was college and in 2001, it was trades.
Exactly.
Right.
So in that first year, colleges gave the fewest qualifications.
Yeah.
But then in the next two years, trades gave the fewest.
Now, it is possible to describe that.
Yeah, sure.
But would we really want to get into that level of complexity to tell us the lowest something?
Not really.
I think a simpler thing here would be to say that the biggest increase was seen in colleges.
Right, okay, because it did a 9% increase.
Right, brilliant.
So you could totally do that.
So I would say for these change charts right, it's the same changes we're looking for, any change chart.
Overall change, definitely highest in number.
Yep.
And then, as Nick has just done, you could look for the item that saw the most change.
You could also look for things which are similar.
And we'll talk about that in a moment.
Because I think, on this chart, the other striking thing is that two of these educational providers are almost identical, aren't they?
So we've got college and university.
You could mention that in the overview, but I would say probably it'd be much better to do the overall change.
High school is the highest college with the biggest increase boom.
Put all of that into two sentences.
You're already storming your task.
Achievement score okay.
So always for any chart, first thing you do find those key features so you know what's going to go into your overview.
Then all you need to do is work out how you're going to organize the two paragraphs with the specific details.
Now for any chart, you're always going to start those specific detail paragraphs first.
With the item which is most significant.
Yeah.
So 99% of the time, that is going to mean the item which has got the highest figures, basically.
So for this chart, that is obviously high school, isn't it?
It is, yeah.
So we're going to put high school.
Definitely, that is going to be the first item we describe after the overview.
So your job then is to think you've got three other items here in this chart.
You might have four, you might have five.
It doesn't matter.
Then your job is basically to try and think OK, how can I group these items together so that I've got a chance to summarize or make comparisons?
And I would say to do that, you want to do two things.
You either want to put things together which are the same, or you want to put things together which are the opposite.
Yes.
So if we know because we have to start with the item that's most important if we know that high school is locked into that first specific details paragraph and we've got three more I guess we're going to want to put one more item with high schools.
In the same paragraph, yeah.
Yeah.
So looking at these Nick, how would you sort of organize or how would you shuffle the other three into those paragraphs to make them as logical as possible?
So in paragraph one, I'd have high schools first, obviously, as you said.
Yeah.
Then I would contrast that with trades.
Beautiful.
Which didn't change at all.
Yes.
So we've got high schools, which are the highest and trades brilliantly.
They're the lowest, aren't they?
So you've kind of got that contrast.
And then why would, what's so great about college university in the second paragraph?
Because in the second paragraph, we can talk about maybe college first because it grew by the most.
And then we could say a similar pattern was seen.
Or similarly, university percentage of students getting university education showed a similar pattern, or something like that.
Yeah, I mean, you almost could describe both of them almost literally together, couldn't you?
Because, you know, college is nine, university is 10, then it's 12 and 13, and then they're both 18.
It's pretty much identical.
Exactly.
College and universities work beautifully together in the final specific details paragraph.
You might want to actually start with a sentence that says...
In contrast, college and university qualifications showed almost the same trend.
Yeah.
In contrast to the previous paragraph where we had opposite trends, right?
Make sure you say the same or a similar, okay?
Yeah.
You can't have, what's this sometimes?
Sometimes students want to say not almost the same, because you can say almost the same, but they want to say a something same.
Basically, things are the same or they're not.
They can't be quite the same.
Almost the same, yeah.
Yeah, something like that.
But it would have to be a word like similar or something like that, wouldn't it?
Yes, exactly.
So they were almost and that's what they say almost the same, or quite similar, or something like that.
Yeah.
So, once you've got those key features, once you know how you're going to organize it, the next bit, if you've studied well and practice, should be really easy, because all you have to do now is actually give me the facts and the figures.
Mm-hmm.
However, you know, one of the reasons I'm doing this is maybe it's not as obvious for students as it would be to me.
But if we've got a change chart, which year, Nick, would you start your description forms?
So let's imagine you're starting your first specific details paragraph.
You're going to describe high schools.
Would you start with 2001?
Because that's when it gave the most certificates.
Would that be a logical thing to do?
No.
Right.
I agree.
Why not?
You should always start with the earliest year or the earliest period of time and build up to the end.
Exactly.
Right.
Now, I thought that would be quite obvious, but maybe that's just an English logic.
Okay.
So even though...
High schools gave the most certificates in 2001.
If you start with 2001 in my English brain it's already finished then, because that's the final year.
You don't want to go back.
So you want to always start with the earliest year.
So you know something like.
In 1981, the percentage of adults who received a qualification from high schools stood at 23.
Why are we starting with that earliest one?
Because it gives us the opportunity to use- The language that we need to. change language, right?
It then increased slightly to just over 26% before rising again to finish at 28%.
So because we started with the first year, We can use increased, rose, any, et cetera, goes up.
If you start with the last year, you can't use any of the change.
And that's just it.
We're going to describe high school from start to finish.
We're going to do trades.
We're going to hopefully compare them.
We're done.
All right.
So I would say in terms of difficulty.
Once you know the system, you can apply that system to any chart like this.
Yeah.
The level of difficulty, I mean, how difficult would you say that chart is, Nick?
I really think the difficulty in these change charts is the language and the structure.
And I think once you understand how to do a good overview, what to look for in the overview and how to describe the different changes, then a typical change chart like this becomes very, very easy.
That's what I think.
Yeah exactly, and that's why I get a little bit upset when students aren't able to do it, because I just think actually, for me, it's all about good teaching.
Really, if you've been taught well, You should be able to do it.
Yeah,
I think you should, because you could have a little checklist of the different key features to look for.
You know how to organize it.
You know the logic.
It's very, very procedural, right?
Which is why I sometimes get a little bit angry when IELTS give a change chart like this.
So I just want to say...
The way that Nick and I just described for 99 of bar charts that show change, that simple process we use, is going to work for all of them.
Okay.
I'm only going to talk about this one because I think it's a bit strange.
So this one is, well, Nick, why don't you describe what we can see here?
Yeah, we can see already that this one's a bit crazier, isn't it?
So we've got a bar chart that shows how frequently people in the USA ate fast food in restaurants between 2003 and 2013.
And then we've got six different categories.
We've got every day, which decreased slightly.
We've got several times a week, which also decreased slightly overall.
Once a week, which also decreased slightly overall.
Once or twice a month, which increased slightly overall.
A few times a year, which also increased slightly overall, and then never, which is almost identical to everyday, decreased slightly, But for three of them it goes up before it goes down or it goes down before it goes up.
So it's just a mess, basically.
It's a total mess.
I mean, I would say for students for a line graph.
I would always look at the start and the end.
So there might be fluctuations in the middle, but you can look at sort of.
You know, overall are things increasing or things decreasing.
Problem we've got here is it's given us a 10 year period, but we've only got three data points.
And we've got one point after three years and then the next one after seven.
Right, it's just bizarre.
Everything about this chart is bizarre.
So, with only three data points for each of our six frequencies yeah, if you do what we, you know the good practice, the good training is.
Look at the increases, look at the decreases.
Yeah, It is a complete mess.
You've got, like you said, Nix, things are going just down.
Some things are going up, then down.
Some things are going down, then up.
You know, I've got a nosebleed just looking at this.
So what I would say is...
For any really good student who's able to be flexible and actually you know band seven eight, nine students are able to be flexible.
I would say if you're doing what you know is good practice and it doesn't work.
A bit like how we've discussed in one of the most recent line graph episode we did with the strange line graphs right.
If you're doing what you usually do and it's not giving you any result, you need to step back.
You need to think, okay, well, clearly...
I can't really talk here about increases or decreases, because there are so many different types of increases and decreases.
It's all just a bit crazy.
So I would then say for this chart, if we do take a step back and I just imagine we don't even know what these lines represent.
I guess what we could say is that, although there are sort of small fluctuations here, the general pattern of these lines is pretty much the same in each year, isn't it?
Like the once a week, And the once a month.
They are higher in every year.
And they fluctuate slightly, but not that much.
Several times and a few times a year, they're at the same level.
And every day and never, they're also at the same level.
So I think it would be much better for this chart.
For our overall change to have a sentence like that.
You know, despite some minor fluctuations, the frequency in which people ate fast food stayed more or less the same in all three periods.
Okay.
Yeah, I see what you mean.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Now, then you could, and then, you know, so that would give us an idea of change.
Then we can obviously talk about the highest.
Now, the interesting thing about the highest is, I think, who ate the most in the first period?
2003 was once a week was the highest.
Yeah.
Just slightly.
Just.
And then same in 2006.
Mm-hmm.
But in 2013... It was once a month.
Once a month.
So, you know, we could talk about the highest.
We could make that a simple sentence and just say, while most people ate once a week in 2003...
And 2006 in the final period, it was once or twice a month.
That'd be fine.
If you were a bit higher level, you might want to say, you know, in general.
The two most common, what would you call it?
Frequencies, I guess, were once a month and once or twice a month.
Although the former, do you know what I mean?
Although most people ate the former.
For the first two periods, in the latter, most people ate once or twice a month.
So you could play with that a little bit and sort of say you know, those were the two most popular, not most popular most common frequencies in all the periods, although they changed.
Because otherwise, Nick, I don't know what else you could do with this really.
Yeah.
Yeah, it is pretty horrible, isn't it?
Yeah.
I'm just trying to think that I maybe would group every day and never together and discuss them as basically the same.
Well, that's the other thing with this chart is, when we think about grouping, usually we end up with two specific details paragraphs, don't we?
We do, yeah.
However, I think you're totally right.
For this one, it's almost a bit like a mirror, isn't it?
Yeah.
I think we definitely want to talk about once a week and once or twice a month in the first paragraph.
Yeah, for sure, because they're the highest, definitely.
Because they're the highest.
And they're kind of, actually, once you're grouping together...
They are quite cool because one increases and decreases.
And the other one decreases and increases.
Yeah.
So that's going to be quite... That's a contrast you could play on, isn't it?
Yeah.
Then as we move down to the next paragraph...
I would say, you know, I might put the next two down several times a week and a few times a year.
They're also fairly similar, aren't they?
They're sort of above and below 15%.
And then, as you said, every day, never together, because they are almost...
And they're the least frequent.
The least frequent.
Yeah, it's every day or never.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know about this.
What would you say?
Because I've often wondered could you have as the main key feature instead of saying you know, in the first two periods most people ate fast food once a week, but in the next period it was once or twice a month.
In the final period.
Could you say in all years the majority of people ate a moderate amount, amount of fast food.
So then you're basically saying it's not the edges, it's not the never and it's not the once a day yeah yeah, because i would say once a week or once or twice a month, it's quite moderate, isn't it?
It's not an excessive amount.
And then maybe you know that last specific details you could say, as for the more extreme frequencies, Because every day is pretty extreme to eat fast food every day.
Yes, it is.
But I also think it's extreme to never eat fast food.
There's going to be situations where you're going to.
If you're driving a long distance, you're going to stop.
That's what I was thinking.
But this is the thing, maybe like these people are extremely principled.
And they just prepare a sandwich at home before they go.
Exactly.
So I think you could talk about a moderate amount of fast food and an extreme amount.
And then, I don't know, several times a week and a few times a year.
I don't have a category for that.
But so I think here you could definitely have three specific details, paragraphs.
Sure.
Or you could have, you know, spend a bit more detail for once a week, or once or twice a month, and then put the other four, but grouped, as we said so several times, and a few times, together.
And then every day and never, because maybe every day and never you could describe both of those in just one sentence.
I've got another way of doing it in two paragraphs.
Yeah.
So if you have a look at several times a week and once a week, they're almost identical in terms of how, like the change.
You could say that once a week and several times a week are very similar, but once a week is overall more popular.
Yeah.
And like, yeah, several times a week is much lower.
And then you could contrast that with once or twice a month.
Yeah.
Because it's the inverse of what we've just discussed.
And then you could have a few times a year, never and every day, in the second paragraph yeah, like something like that and just between them, contrast and compare and say it's similar and stuff like it's, it's.
It's one that you've got a lot of flexibility with.
Actually this one, i think there's definitely more than one way to do it well.
Well, and I would say that is the great thing about most of these charts is there is more than one way.
But I would say probably the better your language is, the more flexibility you've got.
True, 100%.
To be able to make those more complex comparisons.
But so I would say, you know, the simple way here is, and I guess all I'm trying to say is don't be afraid if you want three specific details.
Body paragraphs
That is fine.
If that makes it easier and clearer and less confused, do it.
But again, once you start that description, we're still going to start with the earliest year 2003, then 2006 and then 2013.
I've never noticed that, Nick.
Why have they done that?
I have no idea Anyway, but yeah, so I'm just pointing to that chart because I think it causes good students headaches because it doesn't follow.
It just doesn't follow the way it should really.
All right.
So then let's have a look at another change chart.
Now, this time.
So in the first one, we had four items, right?
High school, trades, college and university, four.
In the second one, we had six items.
So they were the different frequencies every day, several times a week, once a week.
Blah blah, blah.
And we had three time periods for each, okay?
In this next line graph, we don't have four items or six items.
We only have three items.
Yeah.
So they are... This is the bar chart which talks about UK telephone calls by category.
So we've got local calls, national and international calls, and mobile calls.
All right.
So...
Do we just have three time periods here for each item?
No.
This time we've got three different categories.
But we've got... How many is that?
One, two, three, four, eight different years.
So actually, this one I think is kind of similar to a line graph, isn't it?
Exactly, right?
So...
In the other ones we looked at, all three years for each ones were together, weren't they?
So all of the high school certificates, the three years were together.
So you could see what happened to them.
This is completely different.
In this bar chart, we've got years at the bottom.
Mm-hmm.
And then we just see what happens to each one by year.
So if ever you've got a bar chart like this, where you're going to have loads and loads and loads of lines, right.
Six, seven, eight, nine different lines.
There's one and there's another one in the Cambridge books like this, which talks about home ownership, the percentage of people who owned
Yeah, who owned or rented a house in a different period.
Just by looking at it, it's completely different.
And as you said, Nick, although it is given to us as a bar chart, this is essentially a line graph.
It is, isn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you know, what does that mean?
Well, that means that we can now use language like hit a peak.
Hit a peak.
Hit a trough.
A trough, exactly.
Or something could overtake something else, right?
You can't use that.
Could you use that language in the previous one?
No, not really.
We don't have enough opportunity here to do that.
We don't have enough data points, do we?
So I would just say, if you've got a bar chart like this, where you've got years at the bottom, that's how you're going to know what it is right.
Because at the bottom, it's just years.
And you've got loads and loads of data points.
You can just imagine drawing a line at the top of the bar charts.
And that is really creating your line for the line graph.
Mm-hmm.
We're going to look for the highest, the lowest, things like that.
This is one of those bar charts Nick, which we've discussed before, where I think it's about the reduction in the gap actually right,
So all types of calls increase.
Mm-hmm.
With the exception of local fixed lines, which decreases after 1999.
And then as a result, although it remains the most common type of call.
Yeah.
The gap between it and the other types of call were narrower at the end than the beginning.
If that means nothing to you, go back and find our line graph episode, because we look at a line graph very similar to this.
But I just wanted to point this out because I don't think we need to discuss it too much, because it's just a line graph and we've done line graph episodes.
But that is the other type of change bar chart.
Okay, so I think...
That is just our overview of bar charts that show change.
Most of the time, it's going to be like the first one we did, the educational providers.
But just be aware, you might get the hidden line graph in a bar chart.
All right, so let's then move to compare charts, Nick.
So as we said before, in a compare chart, we don't have any years, all right?
So, because we don't have any years, all of that lovely increase decrease, language that we're going to, it's gone, it's in the rubbish bin, dead.
So that means that all we're going to be able to really do is, like i said before, is consider things which are higher and lower, or things which are more or less.
Yeah, essentially.
Um, Now they can look very similar to the bar charts we've just looked at.
I'm thinking of there's, I think it's Cambridge 15, Nick.
There's a bar chart which talks about there are five cities in Australia and it's about how people in those cities consume coffee.
Yeah.
So there's like drinking instant coffee, drinking fresh coffee and going to a cafe.
Right.
So it's kind of similar.
You've got those five items and three bits of information.
But the difference now is for each city.
We don't have the same information in different years, right?
We've got different information.
Just general information for one time period.
Exactly.
So usually what we've got then is we've got the items, which there would be the cities.
Mm-hmm.
And then we've got the things which we're comparing, and they'll be the things which are given to us in the box.
So for that one, that was the different types of coffee.
Most of the time though, Well, a lot of the time you might be comparing men and women, okay?
But if we look at this chart and I've chosen this one for us to do what is immediately completely different about this bar chart?
Forget about change and compare.
But what's very different about this bar chart to the other ones that we looked at?
So we've got 10 different countries yes, which is quite a lot um, and it seems, just quickly glancing at it, that so it's about electricity consumption yeah, and production in 2014, and a lot of the countries have very, very well, almost all the countries have extremely similar levels of production and consumption um, And China and the United States are miles ahead of everybody else, who are all basically on the same level.
Yes.
Well, exactly.
So you've gone way more advanced.
All I was going to say was this bar chart.
No, it's brilliant.
We'll come back to everything you've just said.
Is that this bar chart is kind of on its side compared to the other bar charts, isn't it?
It's that simple you wanted it, yeah.
So all the other bar charts went up and this one goes from left to right.
So that's why I've chosen this one just to show you that there actually are some bar charts that look like this, but it is still a bar chart.
So, as Nick has just done brilliantly, I would say, for any compare bar chart, when you're looking for your key features, As I said, we want to be looking for higher and lower or highest and lowest.
And simple things to do is just for this particular bar chart.
So for any bar chart, you've got the items which we're considering and then the things in the box, which is what we're comparing.
So I would try to have at least one key feature for each thing.
So for this chart we probably want one key feature that talks about countries and one key feature which compares the countries and one key feature which compares production and consumption.
Mm-hmm.
So, based on what you just observed, what would be the key feature for the production and the consumption?
So every country produced more energy than it consumed, except for the black sheep of the family, which is Germany.
What a surprise.
Yes.
Telling the rest of the world what to do.
Right, exactly.
So if we've got one that compares whatever is in the box, right?
So for the coffee one.
If you look at the coffee one Nick, it's exactly the same key feature, right?
In every city.
Most people drink coffee in a cafe with the exception of, I think it's Adelaide, right?
But it's the same thing, right?
We're just comparing what's in the box, the things which are shown.
And then the second one, which should be easier is just the highest and lowest.
Let's focus now on the countries.
What could we say about the countries?
China and the United States produced way more than everybody else.
Yeah.
Produce and consume way more than everyone else.
Yeah.
So this is another good example.
When you've got 10 cities, 10 countries, and two of them, you know, have got figures which are by much, much bigger than the rest.
I wouldn't just mention China for the highest, I would definitely mention China in the US yeah, as you said.
So that's how we're going to get now our key features.
We can't be looking at what increased and decreased.
We can still look at highest, but you know, if you only told me china produced and consumed the most electricity, is that going to be enough nick?
No, because we're not making comparisons then, and part of the task is to make comparisons where relevant.
Yeah,
So I think you've got to be also looking at, well, how does production compare to consumption?
Just telling me that China is the highest is fine for a band six, but most of us want more than a band six, don't we?
Once we've done that, again...
Slightly different this time, but the same principles, isn't it?
We're going to always start with the item or the items which are most important.
So obviously here, China and the United States, because they're by far the highest.
Then again, we either want to put opposites or things which are similar.
A bit like the fast food one we just looked at, Nick, with 10 countries.
I mean, how would you organize this?
It's a bit tricky to see, really.
I think what I would probably do is now this one is a little bit tricky, and I don't have much experience with this type of chart.
But I would probably talk about obviously, China and United States.
Group them together.
Talk about them first.
Yeah.
And then I would probably do Russia, Japan and India in the second part of that paragraph as a group also.
And then in the next paragraph, I would start it with Germany.
By saying that it was the exception.
Yeah.
In contrast to Canada France, Brazil and Korea, which all produced a similar amount and consumed a similar amount of energy, which was lower than the rest of the world or the other countries mentioned.
I would paragraph in exactly the same way.
Right.
And I think I would do exactly the same thing, which you've got to mention Germany specifically.
Yes.
As it is the exception.
I might put that exception at the end.
Right.
Right at the end of the report.
At the end.
Because I usually think exceptions you can stick at the end because you can just say in contrast.
Mm-hmm.
And then it's done.
It's an easier transition.
But I totally agree.
And you've done something, well, two things there, which are really important.
The first thing is, you said we want to group these items, right?
We don't want to give every single statistic for each.
It's going to be boring, isn't it?
It's going to be boring.
It's going to be a list.
So we spoke about this in a previous podcast.
The magic phrase here is ranging from X and Y to X and Y.
So, as you said, for those you know Canada France, Germany and Korea all had very similar rates, with production ranging from lowest production 4851 to highest production.
618.9 and consumption ranging from 44.95 to 449.5 to 499.
So just put ranging from X to that has covered everything.
But the other clever thing you did, Nick, is you didn't just say the other five countries.
Mm-hmm.
Canada, France, Brazil and Korea.
They're the four that we're linking together, aren't they?
That's really important because...
Part of the band descriptors, they very, very clearly say you must describe each item.
Yes.
So I would always make sure you always get the name of each item down, even if you're not going to give the specific statistics.
For each of those items.
You could group them together, say you know they were similar, ranging from two, but definitely just give me their names so that the examiner can say yes, everything was included.
Mm-hmm.
But the key thing here, again, I'm going to repeat it.
When you've got a compare chart for your key features, have one thing that compares the item.
So here we've got countries and one key feature that compares the things in the box.
So here we're.
You know, comparing production and consumption.
It might be different coffee, whatever it is.
If you do those two things, you're gonna have decent overview.
You know you might miss something.
There might be a brilliant clever band nine overview or key feature, but you are going to be doing good enough to definitely get a seven.
Yeah yeah, so they are our compared bar charts.
We've got loads of those.
We're just going to have a look though, at One more.
So this bar chart looks very, very similar.
Okay.
It's also comparing two things.
So it's not production and consumption of energy.
This time we're comparing men who did physical activity in one year with women who did physical activity in one year.
So we're comparing two things men and women, but this time obviously, we're not actually looking at men and women in different countries.
It's just one, isn't it?
It's Australia.
It's just one country.
It's Australia.
And because it's just one country, obviously, we can't just have two bits of information, right?
It can't be like 52% of men and 48% of women finished.
They've divided the gender not into countries but into age groups.
Mm-hmm.
Now, this is huge, okay, because we've got how many age groups?
Six.
Six.
15 to 24, 25 to 34, 35 to 44, 45 to 54, 55 to 64 and 65 and over.
If you have age groups, the first thing I want to say is please be careful.
You can talk about the youngest group.
Here is 15 to 24.
That is, in fact, the youngest.
You can talk about the oldest group.
Of 65 and over.
That is over.
Could you talk about the middle-aged group, Nick?
No, because we don't know what that means.
I've got no idea what middle age means.
Your middle age, I bet, is very different to my middle age because I am 46, right?
So I'm, oh my God, I'm in the third oldest category.
Anyway.
That's not the point.
So talk about the youngest, the eldest, the rest of them, you're going to have to name them.
Okay.
So you're going to have to say you know those age 25 to 34, or people in the 25 to 34 age bracket blah blah, blah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So if we, Nick, let's do our best practice.
Let's have, so we've got here the items.
They're not countries, they're age groups.
And the box is men and women.
So what can you tell me here if we compare?
Compare men and women, Nick.
Guess what you're going to find?
So that women in all age groups except 15 to 24 did more physical activity.
Yeah.
It's exactly the same again, isn't it?
In every age group, yeah, women exercise more than men with the exception of the youngest.
Boom.
If we're then looking at the items of the individual age groups, I mean and again we're just going to do the easiest thing highest and lowest.
What could we say then for highest and lowest or just highest?
Well, the highest for women is 45 to 54.
That's me.
Yeah.
And the lowest, the highest for men, sorry, is 52.8 in 15 to 24.
So in the youngest age group.
Yeah.
So you could literally say, in terms of individual age groups, women exercise most between the ages of 45 and 54, but men exercise most between 15 and 24.
Done.
Done.
So we might want to come back to that overview later, okay?
But the thing is then, what we would usually do when we were grouping our items is we would group things which are similar or which are opposite, and we would start with the highest.
So if we did what we usually do, we'd want to start probably with...
54 to, 45 to 54.
To 45 to 54.
Okay.
Well, that's all great.
And we could maybe put with that age group the one below and the one after, because they're very similar, aren't they?
But the problem is, is that we're just jumping from age to age to age.
It's not very well formatted, is it?
I guess in that way.
It's not very easy to follow.
I think when you're jumping between countries, you can kind of understand, well, here's China.
But if you're like people who are 20, people who are 50, people who are 30, it all gets a bit confusing.
Okay.
So again, if anytime you're following best practice and things aren't great, probably means there's a different way.
So what's interesting if we have ages is that this is a compare chart.
There is only one year, 2010.
However, if you think about There, is a way we can describe this chart.
If we start always when we've got ages at the bottom with the youngest group.
And work our way up to the oldest.
And work our way up to the oldest.
What door does that now open, Nick?
It's the...
I can't remember the word.
We can use change language.
We can use change language, because what we can talk about now we're not talking about increases with time, but we're talking increases with age.
Exactly.
So I would say, if you ever have these age groups, we're not going to do.
What we usually do is we're not going to start with.
You know the one which was highest.
No, we'll start with the youngest group.
And actually, if you think about it, if we just do, you know, if we're going to divide this into two paragraphs, we're probably going to do the first three age groups in the first and then the three oldest in the next.
What happens to men with age in these first three groups?
It goes down.
It goes down, doesn't it?
It drops.
Quite significantly, actually, as well.
Yeah.
So, you know, you've got really high in the first one, then it goes lower and lower.
Exactly.
What happens to the women in those first three age groups?
Well, it's low and it rises as they get older.
It's the opposite, isn't it?
It's the opposite, yeah.
Yes.
So what I would do for this is, as you said, start with men.
In the youngest age group, men exercise the most at 52% and women exercise 5% less.
Mm-hmm.
However, while the percentage of men then falls over the next two age groups, to 42 and 395, women show the opposite trend and grow to 49.
Boom.
So we can use, even though this is a compare chart, we can now use increase, decrease language, and it's a much easier.
It's much easier to follow, isn't it?
That's true?
Yeah it's, it would be.
It would read much more logically than if you described the random age groups.
Yes, whenever students are jumping between ages, Again my nose is bleeding because I can kind of follow it, but it doesn't mean anything.
It's just numbers, numbers, numbers.
But if we talk about, you know, it decreased, it increased.
Then it kind of stays the same for women for the middle age before falling, and they finish at almost the same level.
The door is open for us to use much, much richer language.
So I would say a bit like our bar charts, which are hidden line graphs.
This is a...
Yeah, a bit like our change bar charts, which are hidden line graphs.
This is a compare chart.
Which is a hidden line graph as well.
A hidden change chart, really.
Because we're not talking about increasing with time, we're talking about increasing with age, and IELTS love these age group bar charts and once you realise that you can use, you know, increase with age, that is the phrase, or decrease with age, I think everything becomes a lot easier.
It does, Yeah.
So you know some of the times students.
Some students might say God, do I have to know all these things?
No, you don't.
But actually, if you learn the basic principles, all it's doing is it's making it easier in the long run, because otherwise you've got so much data there.
It's all kind of similar.
You're jumping around.
It's confusing.
Mm hmm.
I feel like I learned something today.
Well, very nice.
Did you?
Oh, that's good.
I mean, I felt like also we did that much more quickly.
Than you were expecting.
That...
Yeah, I thought this is going to take two hours.
And also, I think we managed to do it quite clearly.
I hope so.
It was very clear to me.
Well, that's all that matters, ladies and gentlemen.
So if there's a problem, go to Nick.
Yeah, I mean, obviously, I think you needed to be looking at the charts.
Yeah, it's going to help you massively.
It's going to help massively.
But I do think that was a good kind of summary of the different bar charts.
You might need to go and listen to this again, right?
Probably it's the type of episode where the first time you listen, you're following and you're kind of going uh-huh uh-huh, uh-huh.
But then you get to the end and you've forgotten.
I do this when I watch how-to videos.
Wait a minute.
What was that one at the beginning?
But if you listen a couple of times and you do some practices following those basic principles, it's going to give you a great framework.
And as I said before, if you're following those principles and it's not working...
Something different is happening.
Definitely come back to this episode after a while and see if you remember everything.
Yeah.
And that could be like the little thing that rejigs it in your mind.
You're like, oh, now I get it.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Or go and have a look at the actual bar charts, the ones that show the different types and, you know, go through them again.
Right.
That one's that one.
This one's different because of this.
This one's this one.
Yeah.
Repeat review.
That is the key, I think.
So.
I hope you found this podcast useful.
There will actually not be a podcast next.
Tuesday because we have a long weekend here in the UK.
And actually, I'm doing something rather nice, Nick.
I am holding a celebration of my mum's life.
It's been 10 years since she died, but I've gathered all of her friends into my godmother's garden.
There's going to be about 20 of us.
And we're going to have...
Very English.
I've ordered, I've genuinely ordered sandwiches and cakes and maybe a little bit of bubbly.
We're going to have a nice celebration.
So pray for good weather.
That's the only thing that will disappoint me if it's not good weather.
So I'm going to be away and I'm not back until Tuesday.
So I think next week we will play a rerun.
Yeah.
So if you've got one, you know, something you'd like to listen again.
Yeah, send a request.
Yeah maybe, particularly if it's one of the ones which is a patron-only one, we could do that as a rerun.
So if there is something you would like us to play again, let us know.
But then we'll be back the following week, which I know, Nick, is another public holiday.
Do you know why?
Why?
It's the King's coronation.
Oh, is it?
Yeah.
He's been crowned King Charles.
I think.
No, I think it's happening on the Saturday, but we still get a bonus, a completely bonus public holiday, because I think he's trying to win over the public.
He's won me over anyway.
But in any case, we will have an episode that day.
Okay.
I might even give a discount code in celebration of the King's coronation.
Charles 20 or something.
Don't give it away, Nick.
King 10.
No, that is not it.
Don't use that yet.
You'll have to wait until then.
But anyway, until then, take care.
Well done if you've listened this far and we'll see you in a couple of weeks.
Take care.
Bye.
Nick and I do not represent IELTS, and everything you heard in this episode is our own personal opinion.
You can find the show notes and transcript for this episode on our blog.
That's blogmyiosclassroomcom, And if you're looking for our video courses, speaking lessons and marking service, You can find that at wwwmyiotsclassroomcom.
If you have a question or query or just want to chat, you can email Nick and I at hello at myiotsclassroomcom.
Our theme music is by Heartbeat and our artwork is produced by David Brown.
Have a great week.
Study hard.
And remember, this is my IELTS classroom.
Thanks for listening.
We'll see you next week.
