IELTS Linking words 2

Exercise 2.1: Choose a correct linking word

1. .................. (Although/Despite/So) the government building more homes in city centres, there is
still a lack of housing
2. .................. (But/ Although/ Despite) the government is increasing the amount of money spent
on dealing with environmental pollution, individuals must still play their part
3. People should eat a balanced diet ..................(due to/ so/ in order to) avoid serious health
problems
4. .................. (While / In spite of / Even so) there are children who may not find it easy to live
abroad, for others it can be an experience that helps them mature and become more
independent.
5. .................. (Consequently / As a result / As a result of / Owing to) more and more people
moving to the city to find jobs, housing has beome a serious problem in city centres.

Exercise 2.2: Fill in the blank

1. There are a number of drawbacks to people using Facebook as a way of
communicating .................. it is .................. one of the most common social networking
platforms for both individuals and businesses.
2. .................. the lack of exercise taken by average people, obesity and other weight related
problems are on the rise.
3. Unemployment and poverty, .................. in urban areas, is often deemed to be the cause of
rising crime rate.
4. .................. the rise in urban crime, more and more people continue to move to cities looking for
a better life.
5. More children are becoming obese and .................. schools should be encouraged to provide
more sports lessions and outdoor activities.
6. .................. individuals can make a considerable difference to environmental problems, they
ought to be dealt with on a global scale to be solved effectively.
7. Global warming is a prominent issue these days .................. it has a direct impact on the climate
of countries all over the world.
8. .................. of global warming, sea levels are rising which threaten many low lying lands.
9. One of the best ways to deal with global warming is to reduce the emissions of fossil
fuels .................. from industry.
10. Global warming affects weather patterns and can cause extreme weather .................. heat
waves, droughts and floods.
 IELTS Linking words 2
Exercise 1.2: Useful phrases --- Remember
These phrases are actually from the previous exercise. Please learn from them and write down on your
notes their descriptions.

Phrases Note
Be a lack of <sth>
To increase the amount of money spent ON <sth> .... money which was spent on ...
cụm rút gọn hay dùng
To deal with = to cope with = to face with + the prolem of ...
Although the government <does sth>, individuals must still cụm nói về trách nhiệm của người dân
play their part. rất hay dùng
To find it difficult to do <sth> = to find it not easy to do <sth>
To help <sb> mature and become independent. Chú ý cách phát âm mature.
For <sb> it can be an experience that <clause> cụm đảo cho experience, lấy ví dụ
tương phản, cụ thể hóa ...
<sth> has become a serious issue/problem .... Dùng hiện tại hoàn thành để nói về kết
quả của vấn đề => hay dùng
There is a number of drawbacks TO people doing <sth> Chú ý giới từ
To use <sth> as a way of doing <sth>
To be a platform for ... (communication) Cụm hay dùng
<sth> is often deemed to be the cause of ... = it is generally believed that <sth> is
the cause of ...
To become obese = to be overweight Béo phí.
To be dealt with ON a global scale to be solved effectively Cụm hay dùng
Be a prominent issue these days Cụm hay dùng, và hay hơn nowadays
To threaten <sth> = to pose a threat/threats to <sth>
To affect <sth> = to influence <sth> Động từ là cách dùng duy nhất
Weather patterns từ hay dùng cho thời tiết

Exercise 1.3: READ and then HEAR without transcript

PART 1. READ and SPEAK this loudly:
(Don’t afraid of reading, just follow the normal method, and don’t even think about the meaning at the
first time.

Practice as followings:

1. READ and SPEAK loudly and make a record => Remember don’t write any sentences down, you
can make some notes related to new words => but please limit them as much as possible).
2. Try to not stop, even you don’t know what you are speaking, just follow the normal pace.
3. Listen to your recorded version.
 IELTS Linking words 2
Obesity + hunger = 1 global food issue
I'm Ellen and I'm totally obsessed with food. But I didn't start out obsessed with food. I started
out obsessed with global security policy, because I lived in New York during 9/11 and it was a
very relevant thing. I got from global security policy to food because I realized when I'm hungry,
I'm really pissed off, and I'm assuming the rest of the world is too. Especially if you and your kids
are hungry and your neighbor's kids are hungry and your whole neighborhood is hungry. And
actually, it looks like the areas of the world that are hungry are also the areas of the world that
are pretty insecure.
So I took a job at the United Nations World Food Programme as a way to try to address these
security issues through food security issues. There, I came across what I think is the most
brilliant of their programs. It's called School Feeding and it's a really simple idea to get in the
middle of the cycle of poverty and hunger that continues for a lot of people around the world,
and stop it. A free school meal gets kids into school, which is education, the first step out of
poverty, but it also gives them the micronutrients and the macronutrients they need to develop
mentally and physically.
While I was working at the UN, I met this girl. Her name is Lauren Bush. And she had this really
awesome idea to sell the bag, called the "Feed Bag" -- which is really beautifully ironic because
you can strap on the Feed Bag. But each bag we'd sell would provide a year's worth of school
meals for one kid. It's so simple, and we thought, OK, it costs between 20 and 50 bucks to
provide school feeding for a year. We could sell these bags and raise a ton of money and
awareness for the World Food Programme. But at the UN, sometimes things move slowly and
they basically said no. And we thought, this is such a good idea, it's going to raise so much
money. So we said screw it, we'll start our own company, which we did, three years ago. That
was my first dream, to start this company called FEED, and here's a screenshot of our website.
We did a bag for Haiti just a month after the earthquake to provide school meals for kids in
Haiti. So FEED's doing great. We've so far provided 55 million meals to kids around the world by
selling now 550,000 bags, a ton of bags, a lot of bags.
All this time you're really -- hunger is a hard thing to think about, because what we think about
is eating. I think about eating a lot and I really love it. And the thing that's strange about
international hunger and talking about international issues is that most people want to know:
"What are you doing for America's kids?" There's definitely hunger in America: 49 million
people and almost 16.7 million children. I mean that's pretty dramatic for our own country.
Hunger definitely means something different in America than it does internationally, but it's
incredibly important to address hunger in our own country. But the bigger problem that we all
know about is obesity, and it's dramatic. The other thing that's dramatic is that both hunger and
obesity have really risen in the last 30 years. Unfortunately, obesity's not only an American
problem. It's actually been spreading all around the world and mainly through our kind of food
systems that we're exporting. The numbers are pretty crazy. There's a billion people obese or
overweight and a billion people hungry.
 IELTS Linking words 2
So those seem like two bifurcated problems, but I kind of started to think about, you know,
what is obesity and hunger? What are both those things about? Well, they're both about food.
And when you think about food, the underpinning of food in both cases is potentially
problematic agriculture. And agriculture is where food comes from. Agriculture in America's
very interesting. It's very consolidated and the foods that are produced lead to the foods that
we eat. The foods that are produced are, more or less, corn, soy and wheat. And that's three-
quarters of the food that we're eating: processed foods and fast foods. Unfortunately, in our
agricultural system, we haven't done a good job in the last three decades of exporting those
technologies around the world. So African agriculture, which is the place of most hunger in the
world, has actually fallen precipitously as hunger has risen. So somehow we're not making the
connect between exporting a good agricultural system that will help feed people all around the
world.
Who is farming? That's what I was wondering. So I went and stood on a big grain bin in the
Midwest, and that really didn't help me understand farming, but I think it's a really cool picture.
And the reality is that between farmers in America -- who actually, quite frankly, when I spend
time in the Midwest, are pretty large in general. And their farms are also large. But farmers in
the rest of the world are actually quite skinny, and that's because they're starving. Most hungry
people in the world are subsistence farmers. And most of those people are women -- which is a
totally other topic that I won't get on right now, but I'd love to do the feminist thing at some
point. I think it's really interesting to look at agriculture from these two sides. There's this large,
consolidated farming that's led to what we eat in America, and it's really been since around
1980, after the oil crisis, when, you know -- mass consolidation, mass exodus of small farmers in
this country. And then in the same time period, we've kind of left Africa's farmers to do their
own thing. Unfortunately, what is farmed ends up as what we eat. And in America, a lot of what
we eat has led to obesity and has led to a real change in sort of what our diet is, in the last 30
years.
It's crazy. A fifth of kids under two drinks soda. Hello! You don't put soda in bottles. But people
do, because it's so cheap, and so our whole food system in the last 30 years has really shifted. I
mean, you know, it's not just in our own country, but really we're exporting the system around
the world, and when you look at the data of least developed countries -- especially in cities,
which are growing really rapidly -- people are eating American processed foods. And in one
generation, they're going from hunger and all of the detrimental health effects of hunger to
obesity and things like diabetes and heart disease in one generation. So the problematic food
system is affecting both hunger and obesity. Not to beat a dead horse, but this is a global food
system where there's a billion people hungry and a billion people obese. I think that's the only
way to look at it. And instead of taking these two things as bifurcated problems that are very
separate, it's really important to look at them as one system. We get a lot of our food from all
around the world and people from all around the world are importing our food system, so it's
incredibly relevant to start a new way of looking at it.
 IELTS Linking words 2
I've learned -- and the technology people here, which I'm totally not one of -- but apparently, it
really takes 30 years for a lot of technologies to become really endemic to us, like the mouse
and the Internet and Windows. You know, there's 30-year cycles. I think 2010 can be a really
interesting year because it is the end of the 30-year cycle, and it's the birthday of the global
food system. That's the first birthday I want to talk about. If we really think that this is
something that's happened in the last 30 years, there's hope in that. It's the 30th anniversary of
GMO crops and the Big Gulp, Chicken McNuggets, high-fructose corn syrup, the farm crisis in
America and the change in how we've addressed agriculture internationally. So there's a lot of
reasons to take this 30-year time period as sort of the creation of this new food system. I'm not
the only one who's obsessed with this whole 30-year thing. The icons like Michael Pollan and
Jamie Oliver in his TED Prize wish both addressed this last three-decade time period as
incredibly relevant for food system change. Well, I really care about 1980 because it's also the
30th anniversary of me this year. And so in my lifetime, a lot of what's happened in the world --
and being a person obsessed with food -- a lot of this has really changed.
So my second dream is that I think we can look to the next 30 years as a time to change the
food system again. And we know what's happened in the past, so if we start now and we look at
technologies and improvements to the food system long-term, we might be able to recreate the
food system so when I give my next talk and I'm 60 years old, I'll be able to say that it's been a
success. So I'm announcing today the start of a new organization, or a new fund within the FEED
Foundation, called the 30 Project. And the 30 Project is really focused on these long-term ideas
for food system change. And I think by aligning international advocates that are addressing
hunger and domestic advocates that are addressing obesity, we might actually look for long-
term solutions that will make the food system better for everyone.
We all tend to think that these systems are quite different and people argue whether or not
organic can feed the world, but if we take a 30-year view, there's more hope in collaborative
ideas. So I'm hoping that by connecting really disparate organizations like the ONE campaign
and Slow Food, which don't seem right now to have much in common, we can talk about
holistic, long-term, systemic solutions that will improve food for everyone. Some ideas I've had
is like, look, the reality is -- kids in the South Bronx need apples and carrots and so do kids in
Botswana. And how are we going to get those kids those nutritious foods?
Another thing that's become incredibly global is production of meat and fish. Understanding
how to produce protein in a way that's healthy for the environment and healthy for people will
be incredibly important to address things like climate change and how we use petrochemical
fertilizers. And, you know, these are really relevant topics that are long-term and important for
both people in Africa who are small farmers and people in America who are farmers and eaters.
And I also think that thinking about processed foods in a new way, where we actually price the
negative externalities like petrochemicals and like fertilizer runoff into the price of a bag of chips
-- Well, if that bag of chips then becomes inherently more expensive than an apple, then maybe
it's time for a different sense of personal responsibility in food choice because the choices are
 IELTS Linking words 2
actually choices instead of three-quarters of the products being made just from corn, soy and
wheat.
The 30Project.org is launched and I've gathered a coalition of a few organizations to start. And
it'll be growing over the next few months. But I really hope that you will all think of ways that
you can look long-term at things like the food system and make change.
 IELTS Linking words 2
Exercise 1.4: ENJOY LISTENING
Listen to the TED’s version of the previous lengthy reading:

https://www.ted.com/talks/ellen_gustafson_obesity_hunger_1_global_food_issue

Do you really understand the talk? Please note down some very useful IDEAS about this talk.
 IELTS Linking words 2
Exercise 1.5: WRITING
Childhood obesity is becoming a serious problem in many countries. Explain the main
causes and effects of this problem, and suggest some possible solutions.