- You know what's more exciting than a graph?
Describing it.
Just kidding, they are not very exciting.
But they are very useful.
A graph looks like this.
It's a great visual way to show us data and variables.
And we see graphs everywhere.
We see them at school.
We see them at work.
We see them in newspapers.
So why do you need to know how to describe a graph?
We use data graphs and analytics
to talk about everything in our lives,
from our gas bill,
to politics,
to crime rates.
It's very, very, very, very important
that if you are a learner of English,
you need to know how to describe, what you see in a graph.
We need more than just, oh the numbers are going up,
or the numbers are going down.
Because it's very important that your specific.
And that is why your here today, to talk about,
how we can describe these in English.
So what I've done for this lesson,
I've split it up in a few different categories.
And these categories are related to the trends
and how the numbers are going.
How the lines are pointing.
So, I'm going to talk about words that you can use
to describe when the lines are going up.
Words that you can use to describe when the lines go down,
when they remain the same, and then of course,
we'll have a practice.
So what can when use if we see the numbers going up?
Well first of all, we can use rise.
So you can say, that the numbers are rising,
or the numbers rose.
So this can be like, going steady,
little by little, or they could go a lot.
Gas prices rose significantly in the last quarter.
Another word is increased.
And this is again, it's just like rise, they're synonyms.
You can say the numbers are rising
or the numbers are increasing.
You can use either.
Another word for going up is, soared or soaring.
This is little different because it implies going up
significantly and fast, it's a sudden increase.
You have to use it if the numbers kind of just shot up.
The use of electricity soared last month
as temperatures dropped.
Okay, so now lets talk about how to describe
numbers that are going down.
Of course, if you want to use a general term
for numbers going down you can always say decreased.
And this is very general.
If you want to be safe,
and your not exactly sure of the trend, of the numbers,
you can always say decreased.
Well how about if the numbers are kind of
steadily going down.
well for that you can use decline.
Because a decline implies,
kind of, a change in numbers going down over time.
Another kind of general term, would be drop.
This like just decrease, can be suddenly
or it can be a little more steadily,
but one thing is for sure, they're going down.
The crime rate dropped last year.
Now to get a little more dramatic, we can say fall.
The numbers, or the sales or whatever, they fell.
This is more of a sudden decrease
when the numbers are falling.
It's a little bit more than just slight decrease.
You see a very sudden decrease,
you can say that the numbers plummeted.
It means that they went down far and quick.
The company's stock plummeted after the CEO resigned.
Now be careful when you use these words,
because while some can be very general,
like decreased or dropped,
a words like plummeted can only, only be used,
when you see a very big change in the graphs.
It's very, very good word to know,
especially when your describing graphs.
Okay now, there's another category
that I want to talk to you about
and this category is, if the numbers kinda go,
up and down, and up and down, and up and down.
So if you see the numbers go like that,
you have two choices.
The first is fluctuated.
And the next one is zigzag.
So fluctuated really means,
when the numbers are going up and down.
The difference is that,
they don't have to go up and down a lot.
It just means that they are doing this back and forth.
So they could go up and down a lot
or they could go up and down a little.
So we say that they are fluctuating or they fluctuated.
Now zigzag is a little bit different
because when you see numbers that zigzag,
they have that (makes zigzagging sounds) zigzag pattern,
which means that the fluctuations are really, really big.
There's a really big difference
between the high and low points.
So because of the nature of this graph,
just going like that, I wouldn't say it's very common
but if you see a graph that goes exactly like that,
you can say that it zigzags.
You don't hear it very often
because mostly fluctuations are not that high.
Her blood pressure fluctuated wildly before she became ill.
Okay, so how to we describe a graph,
that looks kind of like a line.
If we want to more specific,
when numbers kind of remain the same,
because this is also very important to be able to do.
So, for example, if the number stay the same,
we say that the numbers remain constant,
stay the same,
or leveled off,
or we can say that the numbers
or the sales or whatever stabilized.
And this one, the last one, stabilize,
you can only really use it
when the numbers before where fluctuating,
they're going up and down
and then eventually they kind of became constant.
So, it has an implication of,
before they weren't stable but now they stabilized.
The economy finally stabilized after years of fluctuation.
So now that I've given you a lot of different verbs,
to use in describing these graphs,
how can we be even more specific?
Of course we can use adverbs.
So adverbs help us be even more specific,
or describe a trend even more closely.
We can use adverbs such as,
gradually,
or dramatically,
or steadily,
or even significantly,
next to our verbs to kind of give us
a little bit more of an accurate description.
So I've given you so many different kinds of words
that you can use because I want you to be more specific
when you write or when you express what you're seeing
but also because it's a little bit redundant
if you keep using the same word.
So please, please, please, don't keep saying,
oh the numbers are rising, the numbers are rising.
I want you to be able to be more specific
and be able to use a lot of different ways,
which is why I've given you this vocabulary.
Now, I've given you a lot of great information.
It's time to put it to use and practice.
Look at this graph right here.
What I want you to do is write a sentence
in the comments describing a part of it.
Be as specific as you can.
Just make sure that you use the vocabulary,
in our video today.
I hope you enjoy this lesson
and had as much fun with graphs as I did.
I love graphs.
So exciting.
Well if you did.
If you had fun and if you leaned something,
please share this video with all of your friends.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time, bye.
So we can use at so, blah, Yanna.
Graphs looks like, oh okay.
You know it's more exciting, oh okay, I need to stop.
Moving on, moving on, I don't have time for this.