Academic Writing for International Students of Business

5 Practice A

 Complete the following description of the table below (one word per gap).

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Table 1 (a) _______________ the proportion of tax revenues raised by national

governments in relation to GDP in 2010. It can be seen that there are considerable

variations, with the (b) _______________ government collecting nearly 45% of GDP,

while in China the (c) _______________ is below 20%. In general, (d) _______________

with higher welfare spending such as France, Germany and the UK collect more (e)

_______________ the developing BRIC economies such as India, but there are some

exceptions to this, with the Brazilian government collecting a (f) _______________

percentage of GDP than Australia’s.

Australia Brazil China France Germany India Japan Russia UK USA

Total tax

as % GDP 29.5 32.3 16.4 44.7 40.4 18.9 28.2 33.2 37.7 28.0

Table 1 Government taxation 2010

6 Practice B

 Write a paragraph commenting on the data in the table below.

Source: OECD

Rank Company Industry Revenues $bn.

1 Wal-Mart Stores Retail 476

2 Royal Dutch Shell Oil 451

3 China National Petroleum Oil 425

4 Exxon Mobile Oil 420

5 Synopec Oil 411

6 BP Oil 379

7 Saudi Aramco Oil 311

8 Vitol Commodities 303

9 State Grid Corp of China Electricity supply 290

10 Total Oil 240

Table 2 The world’s largest companies by revenue, 2013

Source: Fortunemagazine