Task 1: Writing the Introduction

One sentence is enough

The introduction tells the examiner you understood the chart. That is its entire job.

Your introduction should say what the chart shows, in your own words, in a single sentence. Candidates who write three sentences here are almost always padding, and padding is easy to spot: it repeats the question without adding information.

There are no marks for a long introduction. There are marks for the overview and the data that follow it, and every word spent on an inflated opening is a word not spent on those.

Why copying costs more than you think

Wording lifted straight from the question is discounted when your answer is assessed. A candidate who copies a 25-word prompt and writes 160 words has, in effect, written 135 - under the minimum, with a penalty attached, and no idea it happened.

It also wastes the easiest marks in the task. Rewording a sentence is the one part of Task 1 you can prepare completely in advance, because the question stem is always built the same way: The chart shows [what] [where] [when].

Four moves

Change the verb, the noun, the structure, and the time phrase. Any three of the four is usually enough.

1. Change the reporting verb. shows becomes illustrates, compares, gives information about, sets out.
2. Change the key nouns. the percentage of households becomes the proportion of homes; the number of people becomes the figure for.
3. Change the structure. Move the time phrase to the front, or turn an active clause into a noun phrase: how internet access changed becomes the change in internet access.
4. Change the time phrase. between 2000 and 2020 becomes over a twenty-year period, across two decades, from 2000 to 2020.

Worked examples

What you must not reword

Paraphrasing has limits, and forcing it past them is how accuracy errors get in.

• Proper nouns. Germany stays Germany. There is no synonym and inventing one is an error.
• Numbers and dates. 2019 is 2019. You may reframe 2000 to 2020 as a twenty-year period, but you may not change the figures themselves.
• Technical or fixed terms. If the chart is about carbon dioxide emissions, write carbon dioxide emissions. A forced synonym here changes the meaning and costs accuracy.
• The chart type. A pie chart is not a graph. Naming it correctly is a small precision marker that examiners notice.

Four ways introductions go wrong

• Copied wholesale. Discounted from the word count, and it demonstrates nothing.
• Swapped word for word. The graph displays the percentage of households changes one verb and stops. Change the structure too, or it still reads as the question.
• Data in the introduction. Figures belong in the body. An introduction with numbers in it usually means there is no overview coming.
• An opinion or a cause. This interesting graph shows how technology improved lives - neither interesting nor improved is in the data.

Where to go next

• The paragraph that comes straight after this one, and matters more: Writing the Overview.
• See an introduction inside three full answers: Task 1: Line Graphs.
• Want more rewording practice? Word Building: Making Nouns gives you the noun forms that make structural paraphrase possible.