This is the next in my series of sample IELTS essays. This is an essay that asks you to find a solution to a particular problem – overpopulation. This can be a dangerous question as it is easy to go “off task” by writing about the general topic and not directly answering the question. To help you with this, I have included an exercise for you to write your own introduction to the essay.
Understanding the question
One of the most pressing problems facing the world today is overpopulation. What policies do you believe governments should adopt to address the causes and effects of this problem?
What does this essay ask you to write about?
- overpopulation
- the causes of overpopulation
- the causes and effects of overpopulation
- policies to deal with the causes and effects of overpopulation
It is of course 4. If you try 1,2 or 3 you will lose heavily. This is an easy mistake to make and many, many candidates will do just that.
The importance of the introduction
- causes of overpopulation
- effects of overpopulation
- the policies to deal with causes and effects of overpopulation
Your challenge
You will find the full essay to download further down the page. For now I am only going to show the main body and conclusion. Your task is to write the introduction. Do try it. There is a lot to learn from exercises like this. There is a particular skill in writing an introduction that needs to be practised.
Suggestion
As a training exercise try and use these words from the question
- policy
- overpopulation
- cause
- effect
Most of the essay
This time I am only going to highlight the all-important topic sentences. I want you to see the structure. The sentences
- come early in the paragraph
- are short
- are clear
One of the most pressing problems facing the world today is overpopulation. What policies do you believe governments should adopt to address the causes and effects of this problem?
YOUR INTRODUCTION
The first step is to recognise what the consequences of overpopulation are. Only by doing this can we find an appropriate solution. Perhaps its most important effect is the increased rate at which we are consuming the Earth’s resources such as oil. To combat this, governments need to do more research on alternative and renewable energy supplies so that we do not use up all the oil reserves. Another negative effect of overpopulation is how some countries suffer from a lack of basic necessities such as food. Here, an answer could be greater international co-operation so that countries with a food surplus donate what they do not need to the less fortunate countries.
It is not quite so easy to decide how governments should deal with the causes of overpopulation. The Chinese have adopted legislation that requires parents to pay a special tax if they have more than one child. I doubt, however, whether this solution is realistic in other countries. Another option would be to improve levels of sex education by explaining the difficulties caused by having too many children.Promoting contraception though may be problematic in many regions on cultural and religious grounds.
In conclusion, while it may be possible to find ways to address some of the consequences of overpopulation by international co-operation, it is harder to find policies to deal with its causes. It might be that the only way forward is for different countries to adopt policies that work within their particular culture.
Download the whole essay
Sample essay - overpopulation (5380)
Very interesting, very simple and indeed very helpful.
Thank you for the best online IELTS blog
I believe this example illustrate clearly the challenge of many question and how to deal with them. Very helpful. Many thanks!
Pilar
hi helfully
hi i want to use it but i cant use .please tell me how can i use?
Hi
The idea here is to show you how to read the question and organise your answer.
The main point is that your introduction should reflect the task of the question. The other significant point is that each paragraph should also have a topic sentence that clearly relates to the task.
What I’d like you to do is write your own introduction and then compare it to mine, Did you do the same things or something different? You will find my introduction in the download.
I’m a teacher. I don’t want to make it too easy and for you simply to copy my essay – you probably won’t learn anything that way. I’d like people to learn about writing introductions. One good way to do that is just to write the introduction and not the whole essay.