IELTS Vocabulary: Ocean Pollution and Microplastics
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You are now listening to the IELTS podcast. Learn from tutors and ex-examiners who are masters of IELTS preparation. Your host, Ben Worthington. Topic specific vocabulary to boost your lexical resource score. Hi there, my name is Ben Worthington and in this tutorial we are diving into the topic of microplastics and ocean contamination.

That's a bizarre topic, I hear you think. Well, that's exactly why we chose it. It's because it's a very useful, practical, valuable topic for you to use when we're talking about pollution, specifically ocean pollution or global problems or global pollution.

and it's a topic that you probably might not be so familiar with. The typical one of those IELTS topics where your mind goes blank. So that's why I decided to choose this topic. After this tutorial, you will be more familiar with it. We're going to look at some specific topic, specific collocations you can use in your essay. We're going to look at some model speaking answers and

It's probably less likely that you're going to be talking about microplastics and ocean pollution in the speaking exam. However, it's good just to hear this vocabulary again and hear these arguments and hear these positions that you can adopt just like as a third or fourth time to help you consolidate your learning and also just hear them in their natural context.

we are also going to look at the pros and cons so as to build a more solid position when you are using this vocabulary and finally I'm going to share with you a

grammatical feature called the passive voice and how to use it and some example sentences because this is extremely useful for academic writing and exceptionally useful for processes for explaining processes which again is going to be useful for those doing IELTS academic if you get one of those charts where you have to describe what's going on

And finally, this is a jam-packed lesson. Finally, I'm going to share with you a technique to boost your vocabulary. So if you know a word, a single word, I'm going to give you a technique you can use to boost

expand the usage of the word or expand sort of like the variations of the word and this is powerful because it's not sort of like a few lines that you memorize it's a formula you can use and then apply it to other words and then get like eight more variations of that word eight more uses of that word more or less

So it's going to exponentially increase your vocabulary resource or the amount of words that you know through a formula. And formulas are almost like shortcuts. So let's jump into it.

Let me first explain what this argument or what this topic is about. Basically, factories and governments and whatever, basically societies are dumping waste into rivers, into oceans. This is all getting washed out to sea.

and it's all getting with the movement of the currents all this waste a lot of it is plastic it's not getting broken down in the typical traditional way because it can't be it's like plastic so what's happening is with all the currents all the tides and everything it's getting grounded and grounded and grounded into smaller and smaller particles and these particles plastic particles are now

basically in the food chain because they get grounded down to such a tiny fragments that little animals are eating them when they eat some algae. And then the humans, us, we will eat these animals. They go up the food chain. I don't know, the shrimp eats the algae, which has got the plastic in. Then the fish eats the shrimp. Then we catch the shrimp. And then the shrimp is now in there and its plastic is now on our food.

table at dinner time very briefly and most of this plastic just one last thing most of this plastic is accumulating in a specific area called the Pacific garbage patch where all this waste accumulates it all gets grounded down into tiny tiny tiny pieces and the size of this Pacific garbage patch is huge absolutely huge

1.6 million square kilometers. 79,000 tons of ocean plastic. Madness. Absolute madness. 1.6 million square kilometers is definitely bigger than the United Kingdom. Roughly, maybe half the size of the United States.

So this is absolutely gigantic and it's a huge problem. Let's jump into the passive voice for describing processes or passive voice in general. So the best way to teach you or to share with you these sentence structures are with some examples. So the first one: Microplastic contamination has been found in all major oceans.

This is the passive voice because the action finding microplastic contamination is done by an unspecified agent. We don't actually know what who is doing this. The active voice: Researchers have found microplastic contamination in all major oceans. Next one: Microplastics are discharged into rivers daily. This is the passive voice because the action of discharging microplastics

is performed by somebody we don't know. Microplastics are discharged into the rivers daily. If we wanted to make this active voice, we have to put the subject as the main focus of the sentence and now it becomes factories or other entities. Factories discharge microplastics into rivers daily. Final example. Microplastics are ingested by marine animals leading to health issues. This is the passive voice, the action of...

ingesting micro plastics is performed by marine animals on the subject the active voice version would be marine animals ingest micro plastics leading to health issues now you might say micro plastics are ingested by marine animals has a subject it does have a subject it says

by marine animals. However, that subject is, or the agent, is introduced by the preposition "by". Now, and this makes the focus of the sentence is what happens to the microplastics rather than on the marine animals performing the action. So if we wanted to change this to the active voice, as I just said, marine animals ingest microplastics leading to health issues.

Now, as a general guidance, it's far clearer to understand an active voice sentence. And a lot of writers have a disdain, have a dislike for using the passive voice. However,

Because this is IELTS, it's useful to include the passive voice at least just once just to show that you know this grammatical structure and you can incorporate it into your essay and pick up points for grammatical range and accuracy.

Let's have a look at some of your arguments now for the pros and cons regarding ocean pollution and microplastics. Now you might be thinking, what are the pros? Well, I'm going to look at the pros of basically reducing the microplastics. Okay. Now these pros and cons are useful because when you are looking at your IELTS essay,

A powerful technique is just to get your position crystal clear in your mind. Get your position and from this position you develop your arguments. Let's have a look at some of the pros of solving this problem. Marine life is preserved when pollution is reduced. Straightforward. Beaches are kept clean. This enhances tourism and improves the welfare of the local communities.

the biodiversity is protected ensuring the survival of various marine species the lifespan of marine flora and fauna is extended that would probably need to be developed a little bit further it's not crystal clear how it would be extended last one the quality of seafood is improved as contaminants are removed from marine environments so these are like

a range of arguments you could use just to say why we should clean up this ocean garbage patch why we should stop with this ridiculous process this ridiculous activity of polluting the oceans what are the cons what are the drawbacks of cleaning up all of this mess us humans have made well

Marine ecosystems could be disrupted by the necessary interventions to clean up the pollutants. Wildlife might be temporarily displaced during these cleanup operations. Similar argument.

Initial costs for pollution-controlled technologies are quite high. This is one of my favorite arguments going to the cost side of things. We can then learn a ton of vocabulary related to costs and we can talk about government costs, company costs, costs of technology. Very versatile arguments. Technological solutions may lead to unintended ecological side effects.

public resistance can delay or complicate implementation of necessary measures

So these are all the cons related to cleaning up. Legal and bureaucratic challenges can impede swift action. So there's plenty of cons here and we can use this on the reverse side of the arguments. Now before I share this technique of expanding your vocabulary that I mentioned a few minutes ago, let's have a look at some topic specific collocations

Let's just look at them directly in the natural environment in a sentence and later in a few minutes we'll look at them in speaking questions and answers mainly answers so this tip so the typical sentences are model sentences would be microplastic contamination is often described as pervasive across global waters microplastic contamination

By climate change, marine ecosystem disruption is exasperated. Through government funding, pollution reduction initiatives are supported. From industrial waste, toxic substance removal is achieved. In Europe, regulatory compliance is enforced strictly.

On coastal communities, the public health impact of pollutants is studied extensively. In schools, environmental education programs are introduced. So a whole range there. If you go to this tutorial, if you're on our newsletter,

You'll get this whole tutorial or the link to the entire tutorial in your inbox and I strongly recommend you sign up so you can get these tutorials and you can just cover the information again. As I've said a million times, repetition is the mother of all learning and this is insanely true for language learning. It's a process of repetition.

repetition just hearing these words, hearing this vocabulary, using this vocabulary to the point where it becomes an unconscious part of your lexical resource and when it gets to this point you're using it naturally. Let's just have a look at the speaking part three questions and model answers and then I will share this technique to boost your vocabulary once you've got one word.

Typical question. Not so much. It's not a typical question, but it's in the style of a typical question. It's not a typical question because it's a little bit too specific and it's quite unlikely you get such a specific question. However, the style of the question is typical. So why is ocean pollution considered one of the major environmental concerns? Model answer. Ocean pollution is seen as a major concern because it affects

every aspect of marine life and even impacts human health. The public health impact is significant as toxins are absorbed by seafood consumed by people. This is addressed through various clean-up operation efficiencies which are vital to mitigate the problem. I know an IELTS tutor who loves that word mitigate and quite rightly it is a very useful word. Should governments invest more in technology to combat ocean pollution?

Absolutely. Governments should increase their investment in technology to combat ocean pollution. Technologies that enable toxic substance removal and ensure regulatory compliance are particularly beneficial. Such investments are not just about cleaning up. They are about future-proofing our ecosystems. I'm very, very excited.

very, very sure that using a word or a little phrase like future-proofing will pick up some points. It's one of those higher level terms and definitely useful. How can individuals contribute to reducing ocean pollution?

Individuals can contribute by reducing their use of plastics and supporting environmental education programs. Each small action, when combined, can lead to significant environmental improvements. For example:

Just as a side note, if you're one of these students that struggle to extend their answers in the speaking or even in the writing, examples are your best friend. In our course, we've got a whole module about giving examples specifically for the writing. But once you learn it for the writing, it's very easy to adapt to the speaking. Now we're running out of time, so I'm just going to fast forward to the introduction.

technique I want to share with you about expanding your vocabulary so let's just have a look at the word contaminate now the root of this word is it comes from Latin and the root of the word is contaminare which means to make impure or to corrupt we've got the verb contaminate

This means to make something impure or unsuitable often by contact or mixture with something unclean or harmful. The water supply was contaminated by industrial waste. Or be careful not to contaminate the sterile equipment. Let's have a look now at this technique. So we're quite familiar with this word contaminate. We can make it into a noun.

And we can, the noun form is contamination and this means the act or process of contaminating or the state of being contaminated. So some examples: Contamination of the food can lead to serious health issues. The lab reported contamination in the sample. Now we can look at the noun, the other noun version, contaminant.

substance that causes contamination the river the river was full of industrial contaminants scientists are working to remove contaminants from the soil let's have a look at the adjective form contaminated

this means made impure or unclean by contact or mixture the contaminated water was unsafe to drink contaminated surfaces should be cleaned immediately so we have this root we have this word contaminate or contamination

and we've made it into a noun we've made it into a verb and we've got also the adjective form so we've expanded by three the ways we can use the word contaminate and it doesn't stop there and by the way learning the rules of transforming words into adjectives into nouns into different nouns

will expand your vocabulary but that doesn't stop there with the English language we can add prefixes and suffixes so in this case we can use 'de' which means to remove and we can say decontaminate the team worked to decontaminate the area after the spill now this is exceptionally useful because

in the IELTS writing and even in the speaking if we're using the same words all the time we're not going to be boosting our lexical resource score however if we can just add the prefix or if we learn the rules for adding the prefix or the suffix now it goes from one word and we've already multiplied it by three because we've got the verb, the noun, the adjective and now we've got the opposite of that so we can say decontaminant

and it's... now we've got sixth version it's improving it's expanding exponentially and the same happens by adding a suffix to form the noun contamination or contaminant as we've just looked at and then we can... we can say... sorry

we can make forming adjectives meaning capable of contaminable it basically means capable of being contaminated certain materials are more contaminable than others so just by learning these rules the prefixes the suffixes the adjective form the noun form and the verb form we've expanded our vocabulary significantly

and a lot of the time, once you learn the formulas, you can start guessing these. Now, sometimes it turns into a car crash so you need to double check when you are checking, when you are guessing, sorry, because it doesn't always work.

However, when you are preparing, this is the time when you want to be guessing, exploring. When you set yourself an hour to write an IELTS essay, are you giving yourself time? And I say this to all my students. I say, look, when you're preparing, give yourself time. Give yourself time to think of ideas, to experiment.

this is when you want to be making mistakes because you can check them afterwards now when it comes to exam day you really want to be playing it safe because you do not want to gamble your exam fee but sometimes you know you're in that situation and you might need to guess so just go easy on yourself but try to push all your guessing and your experimentation while you are preparing

And you heard me say, spend an hour, an hour and a half writing your first IELTS task two essays, and then just gradually work up to getting it done in 40 minutes. I mean, that's the standard rule. Spend 40 minutes on your task two, 20 minutes on your task one. Right, I'm going to wrap this up.

tutorial up. If you want to get the full tutorial you can sign up to the newsletter. You'll get the tutorial in your inbox. This one and many others

And I strongly recommend just going to ieltspodcast.com and you'll be able to sign up there and then you'll get all of this material, all of these tutorials. And as I said before, just one last thing. As I said before, when you're preparing, you can experiment. And a great tool for your preparation is our AI Essay Check-in Tool. It's completely free. You can sign up to our newsletter. You'll get access to...

You'll get tutorials on how to use it and you'll get feedback which helps you improve faster, helps you overcome that 6.5, gets you to that band 7. So have a look at that completely free. I invite you, I encourage you, I urge you to go there, ieltspodcast.com, sign up, get the tutorials for the AISC checker, get the tutorials for what you're hearing right now and it'll make the whole IELTS process easier.

of preparing for this beautiful exam. No sarcasm intended there. Makes the whole process beautiful and just that little bit easier because I know it can be quite frustrating. So that's it for me today. Have a beautiful day. All the best and good luck with your IELTS exam.