This document discusses how to describe trends and changes in business and everyday contexts. It provides verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs to express negative and positive trends. Transitive verbs are used with an object, while intransitive verbs are not. Describing changes generally includes a verb or adjective/noun for movement, the speed or size of change, and a reason or consequence. Significant changes can use verbs like plummet or soar. The degree of a change can be specified using prepositions like from and to or the extent with by.

1. Tania and Dea Alfaro

2.  In business and everyday English, you sometimes
have to describe changes in trends (movement or
tendency), graphs, and diagrams.
 In the business context, you may have to describe
trends in reports, meetings, and presentations. In
everyday life, you could describe changes in any
subject because things change all the time!

3.  We use following verbs and nouns to express
negative (-) and positive (+) trends

4. Verbs  Transitive
 Negative:
 Decrease
 Reduce
 Lower
 Positive:
 Increase
 Raise
 Intransitive
 Negative:
 Decresase
 Fall
 Drop
 Go down
 Decline
 Positive:
 Increase
 Rise
 Go up
 Grow

5.  Transitive verbs are always used with an object:
 The local utility has announced that it will raise
the price of electricity by 2% in June
 Intransitive verbs are never used with an object
 Net income has fallen for the second quarter

6.  Describing changes and trends generally consists of
three parts:
 Use a verb (or an adjective and a noun) to describe
movement
 Describe the speed or size of the movement
 Explain the reason or consequence of the change
 You can also view it this way: Verb + Speed or Size
+ Result/Reason/Consequence

7.  When we want to
describe significant
changes, we can use the
following intransitive
verbs.
 Negative:
 Plummet
 Plunge
 Slump
 Collapse
 Positive:
 Soar
 Skyrocket
 Shoot up

8.  When we want to give the exact degree or duration
of a change, we can do this by:
 Indicating the beginning and the end of the trends
with the prepositions form and to
 The share price fell from $23 in June to only $12 in
August.
 Using the preposition by to indicate the extent of
the change
 House prices have fallen by 3% over the last 3
months

9. Nouns, adjectives and verbs
 The following nouns are
used to describe trends:
 Negative:
 A reduction
 A decrease
 A fall
 A drop
 Positive:
 An increase
 A rise
 A raise
 Growth

10.  The followings adverbs
and adjectives are often
added to verbs and
nouns to show the
degree of change:
 Adjective:
 Significant
 Sharp
 Slight
 Moderate
 Adverb:
 Significantly
 Sharply
 Slightly
 Moderately