Intensive English 3

Unit 4: The Environment

IELTS Writing Task 1
 Discussion

Look at the two images

below.
A
1. What can you see in
each of the
photographs?

2. What are the causes

and effects of these two
environmental issues?

B
The pie chart below shows the main reasons why agricultural land becomes less productive.
The table shows how these causes affected three regions of the world during the 1990s.
Summarise the information by reporting the main features. Make comparisons where relevant.

Discuss the following questions with

your partner.
1. What was the most common reason
for worldwide land degradation in
the 1990s? OVER GRAZING

2. Which region of the world had the

most degraded land? What was the
most common cause there? NA
3. What was the most common cause
in the other regions?
The pie chart below shows the main reasons why agricultural land becomes less productive.
The table shows how these causes affected three regions of the world during the 1990s.
Summarise the information by reporting the main features. Make comparisons where relevant.

Overview
Overall, it is noticeable that
over-grazing, over-cultivation and deforestation
_____________________________
is the main reason for why agriculture land
becomes less productivity
_______. As can be seen from the
table, _______________________
Europe was the highest country, which has
degraded land
while _______________________.
remaining two countries occopied a smaller
propotion of land degration
The pie chart below shows the main reasons why agricultural land becomes less productive.
The table shows how these causes affected three regions of the world during the 1990s.
Summarise the information by reporting the main features. Make comparisons where relevant.

Introduction
The bar chart illustrates
_____________________________
differents from the cause of agricutural land
becomes degraded
__________________ while the
table provides information about
_____________________________
how three different nations were affected by these
causes in 1990
____________________________.
The pie chart below shows the main reasons why agricultural land becomes less productive.
The table shows how these causes affected three regions of the world during the 1990s.
Summarise the information by reporting the main features. Make comparisons where relevant.

Body paragraph 1
How many sentences are you
planning to write in the first body
paragraph? What are they about?
• Sentence 1: …
• Sentence 2: …
• Sentence 3: …
• (Sentence 4: …)
The pie chart below shows the main reasons why agricultural land becomes less productive.
The table shows how these causes affected three regions of the world during the 1990s.
Summarise the information by reporting the main features. Make comparisons where relevant.

Body paragraph 2
How many sentences are you
planning to write in the first body
paragraph? What are they about?
• Sentence 1: …
• Sentence 2: …
• Sentence 3: …
• (Sentence 4: …)
Model Answer

The pie chart illustrates the major causes of global land degradation while the table
provides information about how three regions of the world were affected by these causes
during the 1990s.
Overall, over-grazing, deforestation, and over-cultivation were the main reasons why
agricultural land worldwide is degraded and it is noticeable that over grazing was the
most common one. As can be seen from the table, Europe had a much higher percentage
of degraded land than Oceania and North America.
Over-grazing, which accounted for 35% of the world’s degraded land, was the single
biggest reason for global land degradation. Deforestation and over-cultivation constitute
another 30% and 28% respectively.
Of the three regions, Europe had the greatest proportion of degraded land during the
1990s, at 23%. However, there, the biggest factor was not over-grazing but deforestation,
which caused 9.8% of the land to become less fertile. Oceania was the second most
affected region, with a total of 13% of its land degraded, and this was mostly caused by
over-grazing, at 11.3%. It is also noteworthy that Oceania did not over-cultivate its land.
In comparison, only a total of 5% of the land in North America was degraded and over-
cultivation, responsible for 3.3%, was the biggest cause.