Section One - Introduction Paragraph (The Overview)
The second part of the introduction
Now that we have paraphrased the topic, we need to give an overview of all of the data. This is to help give the reader context to help understand your essay. You need this in your answer as it is directly referred to in the marking rubric.
Part 1 - introduce the topic
Part 2 - summarise all the data
Note: Do not worry about the language in this section. This will all be covered in the following lessons.
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When summarising, people often look at the biggest and smallest data. E.g. "The USA, Canada and Australia are the biggest countries but America has the biggest population." However, this is not a summary as it doesn't give the reader an overall view of all the data. To avoid this, we need to carefully plan our answer.
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To do this, look for the main patterns in each graph or table and then try to group the data together. In our example, there are clearly three large countries and two small ones. So, we can make two groups.
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1. Australia, Canada and the USA
2. South Africa and the United Kingdom.
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In the second graph, about population, the main pattern is that the USA is the only country with a large population. So again, we can make two groups.
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1. USA
2. South Africa, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada.
Together, we can make three groups.
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1. The USA (high population and land area)
2. Australia and Canada (large size but small populations)
3. South Africa, the United Kingdom (small population and small size).
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Next, start this second part of your introduction with the adverb "overall,". This tells your reader what to expect next.
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Then, by describing the groups of data we selected in our planning, we can describe the entire situation as concisely as possible as it avoids repetition. In our example, it would be very easy to get very repetitive with country names.
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“only the USA has a large number of residents and a large size.”
This is our first group. I describe it first as it has the biggest numbers and could therefore be considered the most significant. This sentence paraphrases population and land area and combines both graph’s data into one.
“While Canada and Australia are enormous countries, the two smallest countries (The United Kingdom and South Africa) have larger populations than them.”
Here I compare the two other groups, in terms of both size and population with as little repetition as possible.
Putting together the introduction paragraph
The paraphrasing of the question and this overview is all we need for a great introduction.
“The two charts detail the territory size of separate nations and how populous they are. Overall, only the USA has a large number of residents and a large size. While Canada and Australia are enormous countries, the two smallest countries (The United Kingdom and South Africa) have larger populations than them.”