IELTS & Academic English: How to talk about percentages

Hello, I'm Gill at www.engvid.com , and today we're looking at a lesson to help you talk

about percentages, okay?

The idea of the percentage, numbers out of 100, okay, percent, something - 10 percent,

that sort of thing, okay.

So, this is to do with statistics and figures.

You might find it useful if you're taking the IELTS exam or any other exam where they

give you some figures and some percentages and you have to write something about them

in one of the tests, okay?

You might be using figures and percentages in your work or in a course that you're studying,

so it's useful to be able to talk about the percentages in English, okay?

So, you might see the figures in a table, in a chart, some kind of graphic form, you

might have a map of the world or a map of a country with percentages set out on it,

there could be some colour coding to do with - connected with the way the percentages are

being displayed, anything like that, okay.

So, let's have a look at some of the language that is used with the numbers and with the

percentages to explain how you talk about the figures.

So, this - it's often that percentage is used to show that there has been an increase in

something.

So, there has been an increase of 25% in something like an increase of 25% in the sale of cars,

something like that, so sales figures, it can be useful for that.

An increase of 25%, or you could say "Sales are increasing by 25%", or rising - the sales

are rising, or whatever it is is rising or climbing, or there is an upward trend, a sort

of - in the direction of more and more of something being sold, or more and more people

watching a television program, or more people watching a video on YouTube, for example,

is an upward trend, okay?

And then, the opposite of that, if the figures go down, there's a decrease of, for example,

10%, so the sales are decreasing by 10%.

Or, sales are falling, or declining, or there is a downward trend.

We had upward trend here - a downward trend means less and less of something is being

sold or there are - the viewing figures are getting lower and lower, something like that,

a downward trend, meaning people are losing interest in something, okay?

You can also talk about the population of a country or a city or the world.

So, you can say something like "More than 90% of the population own a television set.",

or own a computer, anything like that.

Without the figure, you could also say "A large percentage of the population are - live

in rented accommodation.", or something like that, a large percentage of the population

live in rented accommodation.

Or, "A small percentage of the population own a property.", something like that, okay?

And then you can talk about the percentage of people who own a car, has increased, so

we're back to increase or has decreased, the percentage of people who - and then you go

on to fill in the details of what it is.

Okay, so that's just a summary of the kind of vocabulary you use with percentages, and

we're going to go on in the next part of the lesson to look at a particular topic and see

what some of the percentage figures are for that topic.

Okay.

So, let's have a look at a particular topic and use percentages to illustrate that topic,

okay?

So, the topic we've chosen is called "literacy".

So, if you're not familiar with that word, it means whether someone is able to read and

write, so I'm sure everyone watching this video can probably read and write to a good

standard because not only do you know your own language, but here you are watching this

video, learning another language, English, okay?

So, you are probably - you have no literacy problems.

So, if someone is literate, it means they can read and write.

If someone is illiterate - the beginning part there, "il", is a negative prefix, we have

a lesson on negative prefixes, so look out for that one.

If someone is illiterate, they have never learned to read and write, okay?

They - I'm sure they can communicate verbally, they can talk and hear and understand people

verbally, but it's the reading and the writing which is the problem.

So, literacy is what we're looking at now, and applying some percentages to it to see

- to try to understand what the situation is.

So, there are lots of figures on the internet for different countries, because different

countries have different literacy levels.

Some countries, most people, more than 90% of people, are literate.

They can read and write, but in some countries, the figure is very low and there are lots

and lots of people who can't read or write, so it varies from country to country, and

there's one organization in particular: UNESCO, which is part of the United Nations - UN - , and

it stands for education, science, and culture, who have collected a lot of figures, statistics,

and they have listed all the countries in the world and they have shown what the literacy

rates are for those countries.

And I just wanted to mention this - this phrase: naming and shaming, so in this lesson, I'm

not doing any "naming and shaming", that means naming a particular country that has a very

bad record for literacy, and then causing them shame, showing how bad they are at not

teaching their people to read and write.

Naming and shaming is a very good phrase to use.

You can hear that it rhymes: naming, shaming, it's a very useful phrase for all sorts of

things.

So, in this lesson, I personally am not naming and shaming any countries, but you can find

those countries on the UNESCO website, you can see which ones have a bad record for literacy,

okay?

And the countries also that have a very good record.

Okay, so, just to go over how the words are used with the percentages, so for example,

"88% of people in the world were illiterate.", so when you use a percentage number, you can

say 88% of people were or are something, and you can also say "only" if it's a low number:

"Only 17% are illiterate.", okay, so that's different ways of using words on either side

of the percentage figure.

Right.

And then here, you can use the word "rates", which is useful: "Literacy rates are below...",

so you can use rates below, rates are below, and you can also say rates are above, whether

they're above or below, rates are below 30%, okay?

So, that's just some examples of how you can use the words connected with the figures.

Right, so we'll move on now and look at the final part of the lesson and just to finish

off this subject.

Okay.

Okay, so just to round off this subject and also look at some more ways of using percentages

with other words, we'll look at a few more statistics connected with literacy.

Okay, so we have a few sentences here that contain percentages.

So, for example, "Adult literacy rates are greater than 90% in some countries.", so that's

the better literacy rates in some countries, more than 90% of people are literate, so you

can talk about rates, literacy rates, are greater than, and then the percentage, greater

than 90% in some countries, okay?

And then, also, you can give an approximate percentage by saying "around" or you could

say "about" - around or about - so the global, meaning for the whole world, the global adult

literacy rate is around, or about, 84%, okay?

So that's just for adults, not for children, so the figures will vary according to whether

children are included or not included, or whether the figures for children is shown

separately, okay?

So, around 84%.

And then, no percentage in this sentence, but we have a large figure.

775 million adults - that's in the whole world - lack, meaning they don't have minimum - the

basic - literacy skills, meaning that large number of adults cannot read and write very

well at all.

They don't even have the basic literacy skills to be able to write their name, for example,

or the name of the place where they live, anything like that, okay?

So, and then we have an interesting - percentages can be used to show differences between different

sets of people, either by class or age or gender or, as I mentioned, adults and children,

so here we're just looking at the gender difference for literacy between men and women, okay?

So again, using a percentage here, 90% and the word "rate", the global - meaning the

whole world - the global literacy rate for all males, or men, is 90%.

So, the rate for a particular group of people is 90%, okay?

So, that's high.

That's globally, that's the whole world on average, 90%, so that's quite high.

And then again for women, the global literacy rate for all females, for women, is a little

bit lower, 82.7%.

Sometimes, you get a little dot there and you just say "point", point.

It's actually a decimal point, so point is that little circle there, so when you say

it, you say "82 point 7 percent", so if you're good at math, you will know what a decimal

point is.

It's 82 and almost 83, really, if it's .7, a little bit more and it would be 83%, but

it's not quite 83%.

So, that's lower for women than for men, so it shows there's a slight difference, but

that very slight difference represents a very large number of people because we're talking

about the whole world here, the population of the whole world, okay?

So, you can also put it this way and use a fraction rather than a percentage: 2/3.

So, "Women represent almost two-thirds (2/3) of all illiterate adults globally."

So, if women are two-thirds, then men are just one-third (1/3) so that's a lot more

women than men are illiterate.

Two thirds of women are illiterate, one third of men, so that's quite a big difference.

Also, things like access to the internet, a lot more men globally have access to the

internet and it's a bit similar, really.

2/3 men, 1/3 women, so that's also not a very equal situation.

So, you can use what's called a fraction as well, two-thirds, one-third, to show a situation.

So, "Women represent almost two-thirds of all illiterate adults globally."

Okay.

And then you can say something like "The gender difference is most noticeable in..." and then

you can name and shame a country or more than one country once you've had at a look at the

UNESCO website, you will know which countries are - have the worst record for illiteracy

and also - because the UNESCO figures show in columns, male literacy, female literacy

in percentages, you can see the difference, and for some countries, there's a wide difference

in literacy.

Okay, so I hope that's been useful to explain how you can talk about percentages and that,

you know, these are figures and they're very specific, so if you're doing a test or an

exam and you're given a table or a graph to write about and you see percentages in it,

then I hope that will - this will help you to put the words together to be able to say

something specific about the situation as shown through the percentage figures, okay?

And also, maybe, in an exam, you're asked to write an essay on a topic, so if you have

the choice of writing about literacy as an essay subject, then I hope this lesson's given

you a little bit of information for that as well.

So, I hope you've found it useful and if you ever get the opportunity to help somebody

who is trying to improve their reading and writing skills, maybe someone who is actually

illiterate, you might want to do, what we say, do your bit to help, to spend a little

bit of time with somebody and try to help them to improve their reading and writing

skills and it can be very satisfying and it can really change a person's life once they've

learned how to read and how to write.

It can make a very, very big difference, so I hope you'll take any opportunity to can

to help somebody in that way.

So, okay, so, that's percentages and how to talk about them.

If you'd like to go to the website www.engvid.com , there's a quiz on this topic, so please

give that a try and see how you do, and thank you for watching and hope to see you again

soon, okay?

Bye for now.