IELTS Task1 - Land degradation (Cambridge 8 Test 1)

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 selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparison where relevant.

global farmland degradation and its consequences

The chart illustrates the causes of global farmland degradation. The diagram gives information about how North America, Europe and Oceania were influenced by these causes in the 1990s.

The over-exploitation of land is the major reason for degradation of farmland, with over-grazing and over-cultivation accounting for 35% and 28% respectively. A further 30% of degradation was due to tree clearance, while other reasons are only responsible for the remaining 7%.

Among the three regions in question, Europe suffered the most. It had as much as 23% degraded land, in which 9.8% were caused by deforestation, followed by over-cultivation(7.7%) and over-grazing(5.5%). For Oceania, over-grazing constituted 11.3% in its 13% of total land degraded, leaving only 1.7% for deforestation. North America had a lower degree of land degradation at 5%, with 3.3% caused by over-cultivation and 1.5% by over-grazing.

Overall. The different causes of land degradation had a largely varying impact on different regions. The main culprit in Oceania was over-grazing, while North America and Europe suffered the most from over-cultivation and deforestation respectively.

• 
  Book_8_Test_1_Task.jpg
  

Zhiyuan, while you came in over the minimum word requirement, it is important that you learn how to fully develop your thought process in each paragraph. With only 2 sentences introduced per paragraph, you are only representing the obvious information in your essay instead of expanding upon your discussion with observations and additional information. A listing of the problems with your essay are:

1. In the opening summary, you neglected to include the types of land degradation in your overview, which made the discussion outline incomplete.
2. You should not indicate information in a parenthesis because you are expected to discuss, not mention, the represented information in the pie chart and chart columns.

3. In your analysis of the pie chart, you should have identified it as a pie chart describing the world wide degradation. There are keywords in the essay that you must note and use in order to show an analysis and full understanding of given diagrams.

4. All of your paragraphs are under the required 3 sentence minimum, 5 sentence maximum. You cannot expect to present a detailed analysis of any information with only 2 sentences. You need at least 3 to even partially do that.

Try to develop the points I noted above in your next practice test. You have done good work in this essay, you have the skill to be even better. Just remember that you need to find the small details that will help to show a better analysis of the given diagram.

@Holt
Thanks very much! I'll work on that.

Hi, I think you should make more effort on the structure of the essay. After the introduction paragraph, it is better to add an overview paragraph to sum up some general features you observe. In this paragraph, you do not have to quote any figures from the diagrams, but just describe your observations. Other than this, you may also compare the two diagrams by indicating the different major causes of land degradation in the world and regions. I hope these can help.