Describing Trends

You can use a variety of phrases to discuss trends and statistics and using a varied vocabulary can improve your understanding and the quality of your writing. It is also useful to be able to use either verb phrases or noun phrases and include either adjectives or adverbs to give more accurate meanings. Remember that an adjective describes a noun and an adverb describes a verb:

Here you have a handy list for reference:

As you can see, some verbs can also be used as nouns. Some of them are also irregular verbs. In the following table you can check this:

*The verbs RISE /raIs/ and RAISE /reIs/. These verbs have the same meaning, but they are used differently. Look at the following examples:
Prices rose sharply.
Our suppliers raised their prices sharply.

Notice how in both sentences the prices went up. But in the first sentence they went up on their own. In the second sentence someone put them up. That is to say that RISE is an intransitive verb, it has no object so the element that increases is necessarily the subject. RAISE is just the opposite. It is a transitive verb and needs a subject (who or what is responsible for the increase) and an object (what goes up).
Therefore, you can use RISE when you want to avoid saying who is responsible for the change. For instance: The government raised the taxes = Taxes rose.