Spend some time looking at the text below and try to work out what the missing words could be.
NB You are not looking for an exact word, just an approximate idea of what the word would be.
There are, of course, climatic reasons to explain why many areas of the earth are uninhabited. Excessive heat can lead to 1. ??????, as it does in regions of Africa and even Australia, leaving vast areas of land 2. ?????? vegetated in contrast to greener countries like New Zealand. On the other hand, extreme cold can be an issue. One third of Canada, for example, is little more than 3. ?????? – dry land with frozen soil in which nothing substantial can grow.
Show me the skills for word #1 Logically, this is something caused by excessive heat. The examples are Africa and Australia. The grammar of the sentence tells you the word is a noun. The missing word in this example is ‘drought’.
Show me the skills for word #2 We already know that the the sentence is referring to something caused by excessive heat. The grammar of the sentence tells us that the word is an adverb describing how something is vegetated, and the final section of the sentence gives us a contrast in that countries like New Zealand are greener. The missing word in this example is ‘sparsely’.
Show me the skills for word #3 This word is explained immediately afterwards – it means ‘dry land with frozen soil in which nothing substantial can grow’. The missing word in this example is ‘tundra’.