WRITING PRACTICE #2

Part 1. Read the following extract and use your own words to summarise it. Your summary
should be between 120 and 140 words long.
The Irish potato famine of 1845–1851 was a catastrophe that devastated the country’s population and
left Ireland changed forever. By some estimates, the death toll from hunger and disease was as high
as one million, and another million or more emigrated to the United States, Britain, and other
countries; as a result, Ireland’s population today is lower than it was in 1845. The famine was
precipitated by an outbreak of potato blight, a crop disease caused by the fungus Phytophthora
infestans, but it was a combination of social and agricultural factors that enabled this simple fungus to
create such a tragedy.
In the sixteenth century, Spanish explorers brought the potato from South America to Western
Europe. Considered poisonous at first, the potato became popular in Europe during the eighteenth
century because it was easy to grow and highly nutritious (humans can actually survive on just milk
and potatoes). In Ireland, “lumper” potatoes, which would grow even in poor soil, became an essential
source of food. In fact, as the country’s population grew and (in accordance with an ancient custom of
dividing inheritances equally among all male heirs) as farms were divided into smaller and smaller
plots, lumpers became the only crop that many farmers could grow in quantities sufficient to support
their families. By 1845, when the blight first began to cause widespread crop failure, many Irish
people were dependent on the potato for their very survival.
Irish agricultural practices of the time turned this precarious situation into a disaster. Years of
specialization in a crop that required relatively little effort (lumpers needed little weeding and no
irrigation) had left farmers ill-equipped to cope with the loss of that crop; they were in no position to
find alternatives to the potato. Furthermore, the Irish crop was dominated by one strain of potato, the
lumper, which had no resistance to the blight. As a result, virtually the entire crop was wiped out.
Greater genetic variety in the potato crop—planting many different strains of potatoes—might have
increased the chances that some varieties would resist the disease and blunt its effect. Today, the
potato is still a major part of the Irish diet, but modern agricultural practices and genetic variety in the
crop have prevented a recurrence of the famine that ravaged Ireland in the nineteenth century.
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The given extract affords a glimpse into a potato famine in Ireland in 1845-1851 and its disastrous
effect on the Irish. With its ripple effect to other countries, the death toll from the famine was as high
as 2 million. It would not have been as catastrophic if Ireland had not let its agriculture develop so
unattentively. As “lumper” potatoes gained prevalance in Ireland in the 16 th century for its resilience,
the farming methods were simple to the extent of defenselessness. In consequence, for the blight
coming unexpectedly, accompanied with a frail agricultural defense and an absence of alternatives,
the crop was pitifully damaged, spoiling the livelihood of the Irish. Fortunately, they can now escape
from the nightmare of the long-gone famine since the modernization of agricultural practices.
Part 2. The charts below show the statistics of awareness of fake news about COVID-19.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make
comparisons where relevant. You should write about 150 words.

I don’t care whether it

is true or false.
Part 3. Write an essay of 350 words on the following topic:
“We can usually learn much more from people whose views we share than from people whose
views contradict our own; disagreement can cause stress and inhibit learning.”
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the
claim and the reasons on which that claim is based.
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Scrolling down Facebook, we can sometimes see a post of debate motion with firing comments and
cut-throat reasonings, and once a non-compliant to a majority raise their voice, .