IELTS language bank: Summarising and Paraphrasing

This article is deliberately narrower than a general guide to paraphrasing technique, which is a broader skill covered elsewhere in this resource collection and involves restructuring sentences, changing word forms, and finding synonyms. Here, the focus is specifically on the signalling language used when you restate an idea, condense a longer argument into a shorter one, or draw out what something implies — phrases such as "in other words," "essentially," "to put it another way," and "this suggests that." These phrases appear constantly in Task 2 conclusions (summarising the essay's argument), in explaining what a piece of evidence implies, and in Speaking Part 3, where candidates often need to clarify or restate a point they have just made less clearly than intended.

For restating an idea more simply or more directly — useful when your first attempt at expressing something came out more complex than intended — "in other words," "put simply," "to put it another way," and "that is to say" all signal that a clearer restatement follows. "The policy effectively transfers the financial burden from central government to individual households; in other words, ordinary taxpayers end up paying more." "Put simply" works well when you have just made a fairly technical or dense point and want to offer the reader a plainer version immediately afterward: "The mechanism relies on a feedback loop between consumer demand and production costs; put simply, when people buy more, prices tend to rise."

For condensing a longer point into its core idea — useful in a conclusion, where you need to restate your argument briefly without simply repeating your introduction word for word — "essentially," "fundamentally," "at its core," and "in essence" all signal that you are stripping a point down to its most important element. "Essentially, the debate comes down to a trade-off between economic growth and environmental protection." "At its core" works particularly well for identifying the single most important factor within a more complex issue: "At its core, the disagreement is about who should bear the cost of the transition."

For summarising the overall argument of an essay, typically in a conclusion, "in summary," "to conclude," "overall," "taking everything into account," and "on balance" all signal that a final, condensed statement follows. "Taking everything into account, the advantages of this approach appear to outweigh its drawbacks." "On balance" is particularly useful when your essay has genuinely weighed two sides and wants to land on a considered, rather than one-sided, final position: "On balance, while the costs are real, the long-term benefits justify the initial investment." It is worth using only one of these summary openers per essay, at the start of the conclusion — stacking two or three together ("In summary, to conclude, overall...") reads as redundant rather than emphatic.

A distinct group signals what a piece of evidence or an argument implies, rather than restating something already fully stated — useful for drawing out the significance of an example rather than just presenting it: "this suggests that," "this indicates that," "this points to," and "what this tells us is." "Youth unemployment has risen sharply in several regions with declining traditional industries; this suggests that retraining programmes have not kept pace with structural economic change." "This points to" works well when the implication is broader or more speculative than a direct "suggests": "The consistency of this pattern across several unrelated countries points to a common underlying cause."