Video: Planning tables


Some of the principles we have learned from other Task I types can also be applied to tables. The first point is that you can use a five point checklist as you saw in the previous exercise. Once you are clear about what you are looking at, you need to decide what information you will include in your answer and make a plan as to how to present it. Tables can be difficult to plan because they often have a lot of information. It can help to note some of the more striking information. First look for the highest points of data. In this example, 21% is the highest, as you can see here. Next, note the lowest points. In this example, the lowest point of 9% comes from two different countries over three different years. After that, look at the information and see if there is a common trend. This can be easier to do by marking the question paper with an arrow to show direction. For example, in Australia, the percentages are 14, 13, 13 and 14 again, which could be shown like this. Here are some more examples. At this point it should be clear whether there is a common trend or not. In this example, there is not much of a common trend. The next step is to plan your paragraphs. Using our example table, you could decide to split your paragraphs by year or you could decide to split by countries with similar trends. The final step is to add any other points of interest. At this point, you could note that there is no information given for Turkey in 2000.

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