Describe an area of science that interests you

IELTS Cue Card/ Candidate Task Card 425 with Model Answer:

Describe an area of science that interests you.

You should say:

• what area of science it is
  
• what it mostly deals with
  
• how you know about this
  

and explain why you are particularly interested in this area of science.

[You will have to talk about the topic for one to two minutes. You have one minute to think about what you are going to say. You can make some notes to help you if you wish.]

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Model Answer:

As a student of science, all kinds of science interest me. In fact, I firmly believe that without understanding science, we, as human civilization, would never be able to put our existence in proper perspective. However, while any kind of science interests me, one particular area of it interests me a bit more than others.

This particular area of science is called “Genetic Engineering”. Now, anybody, who is interested a little about science, perhaps is aware of this particular type of science, but just for the purpose of some academic reference, genetic engineering is the process of altering the genetic makeup of an organism, with the help of biotechnology and other applied science techniques, so that one or more of its characteristics can be changed.

Dealing with direct manipulation of one or more genes, this particular faculty of science has provided a number of useful applications, including scientific research, agriculture and technology. In plants, genetic engineering has been applied to improve the resilience, nutritional value and growth rate of crops such as potatoes, tomatoes and rice to name a few.

By the way, I learned about genetic engineering for the first time while reading a newspaper article that talked about how some renowned world scientists were planning to increase food productions in order to meet the ever-increasing food demands of our world’s growing population. Later on, I came to know about this in a bit more details by watching and reading different kinds of TV and newspaper reports on how genetic engineering was viewed favourably by some people while not so much favourably by others because of the ethical controversies that it was stirring.

Well, I am particularly interested in this area of science because it would allow us to understand the basic processes of our body so that we can take precautions to avoid being sick or newborn babies do not inherit diseases from their ancestors. Besides, since my family is involved with agriculture, understanding this area of science would also help me in deciding what kinds of crops they should grow in order to maximize their food and vegetable production.