Question

阅读下面短文，根据其内容写一篇60词左右的内容概要。

Why do we have deserts today? Deserts have not always been here. Most deserts that we have today were once green lands full of plant life. One of today’s biggest deserts is in North Africa. However, in the 1st century BC farms in North Africa grew corn and wheat to make bread for the whole city of Rome. How did this area become desert?

Both weather and people can help form a desert. Hot weather or very little rain makes the land so dry that nothing can grow. While in some regions, the increase in desert areas is occurring largely as a result of a trend toward drier climatic conditions.

Continued gradual global warming has produced an increase in aridity (干旱) for some areas over the past few thousand years. The process may be sped up in the following decades if global warming resulting from air pollution seriously increases.

The primary reason for desert formation is human activities, though. If people cut down or burn trees and plants to make land clear for farming, the wind can blow the soil away and turn the dry land into sand. Another big problem is farming on land that is not very good. This poor land can very quickly turn into desert, if it is farmed too much. One of the biggest causes, however, is when people take their animals to the same fields to feed over and over, and the fields finally lose all their nutrition. Because of these problems, deserts are slowly taking over green land in many parts of the world, including China.

However, we can fight the growing deserts! In some parts of China people are working to prevent desert from expanding. In Xinjiang, for example, some farmers are trying new scientific farming methods. These methods make it possible to use less land for crops, so farmers then can plant trees on the rest of their land!

One Xinjiang farmer used only HALF of his fields to grow the SAME amount of crops as last year. On the other half of his land, he planted fruit trees. The work of people like this is helping to fight the world’s growing deserts.

Answer

Today, the earth is witnessing an increase in deserts. Both weather and people are responsible for this. (要点1) In North Africa, serious dryness results primarily from its climatic conditions, and continued gradual global warming has made the land even drier. (要点2) Human activities like over-cultivating, over-farming and over-grazing, however, are the leading causes of growing deserts. (要点3) Fortunately, efforts can be made to stop the expansion of deserts. Farmers in Xinjiang are helping to fight it by trying new scientific farming methods. (要点4)

【解析】

这是一篇概要写作。

写作步骤：

1）细读原文。首先要仔细阅读短文，掌握文章主旨。文章主要说明了地球上的沙漠正在增加，气候和人类的活动都有责任。在北非，严重的干旱主要是由于它的气候条件，而持续的全球变暖使土地更加干燥。然而，过度耕种、过度耕作和过度放牧等人类活动是沙漠日益扩大的主要原因。幸运的是，我们可以努力阻止沙漠的扩张。

2）弄清结构，归纳段意。概要写作是写全文概要，不是写某一部分的概要，或者就某些问题写出要点。因此一定要弄清文章结构，归纳文章各段大意。

3）列出原文要点。分析原文的内容和结构，将内容分项扼要表述，并注意在结构上的顺序。在此基础上选出与文章主题密切相关的部分。

4）在写作时要特别注意下面几点：

（1）概要应包括原文中的主要事实，略去不必要的细节。

（2）安排好篇幅的比例，概要应同原文保持协调，即用较多的文字写重要内容，用较少的文字写次要内容。

（3）注意要点之间的衔接，要用适当的关联词语贯通全文，切忌只简单地写出一些互不相干的句子，但也不要每两句之间都加关联词语，以免显得生硬。

（4）不排斥用原文的某些词句，但不要照搬原文的句子，如果不能完全用自己的话语表达，至少对原文句子做一些同义词替换，如果结构上也能有一些转换会更好。

（5）计算词数，看是否符合规定的词数要求。