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.
Sample Response
The pie chart shows that there are four main causes of farmland becoming degraded worldwidein the world today. Globally, 65% of degradation is caused by over-grazingtoo much animal grazing and deforestationtree clearance, constituting 35% and 30% respectively. A further 28% of global degradation is due to over-cultivationover-cultivation of crops. Other causes account for only 7% collectively. These causes varied across the three regionsaffected different regions differently in the 1990s, with Europe having as much as 9.8% of land degraded by deforestation9.8% of degradation due to deforestation, while deforestation affected much smaller proportions of land in Oceania and North Americathe impact of this on Oceania and North America was minimal, with only 1.7% and 0.2% of land affected respectively. Europe, with the highest overall percentage of land degraded (23%), also had land degraded by over-cultivationalso suffered from over-cultivation (7.7%) and over-grazing (5.5%). In contrast, Oceania had 13% of degraded farmland and this was mainly due to over-grazing (11.3%). North America had a lower proportion of degraded land at only 5%, and the main causes of this were over-cultivation (3.3%) and, to a lesser extent, over-grazing (1.5%). Overall, it is clear that Europe suffered more from farmland degradation than the other regions and the main causes there were deforestation and over-cultivation.
Why this response received Band 8.0
The response is strongest in its accurate selection of figures and concise comparisons across both visuals, including the dominant global causes and the contrasting regional patterns. Its main limitation is presentation as one continuous paragraph, which weakens the separation between global causes, regional detail, and the overview. The highest-priority improvement is to organize the material into a short introduction and overview followed by distinct detail paragraphs for the chart and table.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The response accurately reports the principal global causes, all three regional totals, and the most important contrasts, with a clear concluding overview.
Make the overview even more comprehensive by briefly contrasting each region's leading cause as well as identifying Europe's overall dominance.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas progress logically from the worldwide distribution to regional comparisons, and cohesive links guide the reader clearly despite the single-paragraph format.
Divide the response into purposeful paragraphs so the overview and the two sets of visual data are immediately distinguishable.
Lexical Resource
The response uses precise and varied vocabulary for proportions, causes, and comparisons with consistently natural collocations.
Maintain this precision while varying repeated forms of degradation and affected where a concise alternative would improve stylistic flexibility.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Complex comparative sentences are handled accurately, with a wide range of clauses and punctuation supporting clear meaning.
Preserve this control while using slightly shorter sentence units where several statistics and contrasts are combined.
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 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.
Your response
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