Expressing Percentages Fractions in English Basic English Grammar
hi everybody my name is Alisha in this
episode I’m going to talk about how to
express fractions and percentages I’m
going to talk about a few different
patterns you can use and I’m going to
talk about some questions that people
have especially with prepositions so
let’s get started okay
the first thing that I want to look at
is this chart over here this style of
chart we call a pie chart in English it
looks like a pie in this case for this
example I’ve made it into data about our
favorite desserts just for example so
the black part is people who like ice
cream red is cake and blue is pie so
just for our example but I want to use
this to explain how we talk about
percentages so percent is the word that
we use for this symbol this sort of
circle slash circle symbol we use the
word percent to explain this so when we
want to talk about data in this way we
can use percent before a noun phrase and
we use it with the word of so to use
this data as an example we would say for
example 25 percent of people prefer cake
as in this example or here 50 percent of
people prefer ice cream so when you’re
using a percentage please make sure to
include the number of course followed by
percent so 25 percent 50 percent follow
that then with the preposition of 25
percent of people so in this case my
data is about people’s preferences so
your noun phrase may change in this case
I’m talking about people people related
data and their preferences which is why
at the end of this sentence includes the
word like preferred cake or people is my
noun this may change depending on your
data and depending on
what do you need to explain but in
general this is a pattern that you can
use to talk about percentages so 25% of
30% of to talk about these so please be
careful of this when you are explaining
data in this form or maybe in another
form as well generally though if you
want to explain your data in running
text meaning just regular text you can
use a pattern like this
let’s look though at something that can
cause a little bit of confusion
especially about prepositions let’s
imagine that you need to explain some
data in a graph maybe data that’s
changing so here I have a couple of
different patterns one is red referring
to this red line here and another blue
referring just to this blue line here
just to explain the the way that we
explain these really so let’s take a
look though I’ve made a graph the data
doesn’t really matter so much here like
what we’re actually looking at I want to
focus though on the change of the data
here so on this on this axis I have like
10% to 50% and each dash represents a
10% difference here so the red line I’ve
made an example pattern which is
something something increased by 10%
here so please notice I’m using by in
this sentence so from point 0 on this
axis until point 2 here we see the line
increases from 0 to 10 percent so to one
way to describe this change is by saying
that something something in this case
maybe I don’t know this was about
dessert so maybe like the the number of
people who made desert at home increased
by 10 percent so this by this shows the
degree to which something happened so
this is telling us the amount of change
in other words the degree of change
shows by here increased by so this is
the total change let’s compare this then
to the blue line here so the only
difference here I’ve used the
position to increased to 20 percent so
this is a sentence that matches this
blue line here so I’ve tried to show
from year to to year 3 at this point at
year 3 in this case at point three on
this axis the data is now at the 20%
point so I moved it from 10 percent at 2
to 20 percent at 3 and here I’ve used
increased to 20 percent this shows us
sort of the upper limit of the data
using 2 shows us the limit of the data
so like how far the data went it’s not
referring to the amount of change it’s
referring to the point at which the data
stops or like the end point for that
data so here by using 2 we see that this
means actually the endpoint by refers
only to the amount of change so I could
say for example in this in this line the
red line I talked about before I can say
maybe the percentage of people cooking
at home increased by 10 percent
yes as in my original example or I could
also say in this case the number of
people cooking at home increased to 10
percent both are correct here because
both refer to a 10 percent change or
rather they refer to a 10 percent change
yes using by but in this case 10 percent
is also the endpoint for the data for
that year so in this case book by and 2
could be correct however with the blue
line here the data here I’m saying it
increased to 20 percent in this time
period so that’s the endpoint so 2 is
showing us the endpoint here but if I
want to talk about the level the amount
how much this changed I would need to
use the same expression
so here 0.2 was it 10 percent 0.3 is it
20 percent that’s a 10% difference here
so for this blue line I could say in
year 3 from year 2 to year 3 the number
of people cooking increased by 10
percent
again so in this case and in this case
the increase is ten percent total so
please be careful
by shows us the amount of increase to
refers to the end point of that increase
so in other words what is sort of the
the last data point for that that time
period for example so please be careful
of your preposition choice in this
sentence
now these two sentences show the word
increase you can also use the word
decrease of course meaning to go down
I’ve used this as a verb here but if you
want you can also use increase or
decrease as a noun as well so for
example this graph shows an increase so
here I’m using increase as a noun
shows an increase of which we see here
an increase of 10% from year zero to
year two so from year zero to year two
the amount of increase in other words so
how much did it increase similar to this
point here so when I do it this way and
increase and I need to use of before the
amount so please be careful of your
preposition choices here they can make a
very big difference especially by into
two so please be cautious when you’re
choosing which preposition to use when
you’re presenting data ok let’s go to
the last point for today the last thing
I want to talk about is fraction so
these sorts of things you might see in
recipes you might see in data we call
these fractions but some people have
questions how do you read these how do
you explain them out loud so let’s take
a look I have here three examples
generally a general rule first is to
read the top number here in this case I
have one two and three as the top
numbers we should read the top number
just as you would a regular number one
two three four five six whatever so read
the top number as a regular number in
the singular form so one so you don’t
need to read it in a plural form don’t
try to change the top number at all the
bottom number however we should read the
bottom number like you would a date like
a day of the
like the like the third or the fourth or
the fifth for example so please use the
same sort of numbering as you would for
days of the month so in this case 3rd
6th and 10th we would read them in the
same way that we do dates so we also
need to use the plural form for this
unless the top number is a 1 so if the
top number is a 1 we would read this
with a singular form if the top number
is more than 1 we should read this with
the plural form so for example one third
would be this 1 2 6 this is a hard one
for pronunciation 2 6
it’s even hard for native speakers to
say 3/10 3/10 so 1 1 3 2 6 3 tenths so
if it’s difficult for you to say don’t
worry it’s hard for me to say too but
the the plural form should only be used
I’m sorry the plural form should always
be used unless the top number it’s a 1
ok
another exception to this rule is if the
bottom number here is 2 so if for
example you see something like this like
in a recipe or whatever one over - we
don’t say like 1 second we don’t use
that here we just say 1/2 or 1/2 so in a
recipe we would say like 1/2 a cup of
sugar or half a cup of flour for example
so please keep this in mind so if the
number is a 1 use the singular form if
the number is more than 1 use the plural
form for the bottom number and read the
bottom number in the way you would read
a date all right so those are a few
points that I wanted to introduce about
percentages and graphs and fractions as
I’ve noticed that they can be difficult
to to explain properly sometimes so I
hope that this was useful for you if you
have any questions or if you want to try
something out in the comments please
feel free to do so if you liked the
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if you haven’t already thanks very much
for watching this episode and I will see
you again soon bye
you