Writing skills: statistical report

Materials

One copy of each of the following worksheets.

• Statistical Report
• Statistical Report Worksheet
• Model Answer
• Text Analysis
• Writing Practice

Time :One hour plus writing practice for homework 

Teacher’s notes

This is a simple text analysis lesson. It is relevant for Business English classes and also for IELTS writing task one. Students must first transfer information from a visual chart into a gapped written report which focuses attention onto the chart. Next, ordering the jumbled sentences of that report raises their awareness of how to group the information so that it is presentable. Next a language analysis of that report covers useful verbs, number phrases, time phrases and conjunctions. Each analysis question is followed by an optional (depending on level) language extension exercise of the language feature that has just been identified in the text.

Steps

1. Give out “Statistical Report” and get students to explain it to each other in pairs
2. Give out “Statistical report worksheet” and allow time to complete individually. Check in pairs.
3. Give out “Model Answer” to work from in the next step.
4. Give out “Text Analysis” and work through it one question at a time.  Break to check in open class before going on to the language analysis after each question.
5. Give out “Writing practice for homework”