[General] dire situation

[Ashiuhto]

Is the paragraph natural English?

An article from New York Times reports that disposable chopstick demand is killing China's forests as annual production reaches 80 billion pairs. The mass production of the wooden tableware highlights the dire situation of China's deforestation. The Chinese government has come up with a number of policies to limit the use of disposable chopsticks and conserve resources, including publicly advocated use of reusable chopsticks made from sustainable materials.

 

[Tarheel]

The only change I would make would be the in front of New York Times.

 

[BobK]

I don'y know about 'natural English'. I'd say 'typical journalese' - particularly that use of 'as' in the first line to introduce a bit of background info. You can almost see the journalist surrounded by notes on cigarette packets and paper table napkins thinking 'What can I do with this? I know - bung in an "as".' ;-)

b

 

[Tarheel]

Is the paragraph natural English?

An article from New York Times reports that disposable chopstick demand is killing China's forests as annual production reaches 80 billion pairs. The mass production of the wooden tableware highlights the dire situation of China's deforestation. The Chinese government has come up with a number of policies to limit the use of disposable chopsticks and conserve resources, including publicly advocated use of reusable chopsticks made from sustainable materials.

Say:

including publicly advocating the use of....
​

(1. BobK's comments were right on. 2. I found something I missed earlier. Nobody's perfect. ;-))

 

[emsr2d2]

The chopsticks piece is for a school competition - getting us to rewrite your piece is cheating.

Edit: Thread reopened - it turns out the OP is an ESL teacher looking for help in correcting the students' work and this is one of the pieces. I have asked the OP to amend their member profile to make it clear he/she is a teacher, to avoid such misunderstandings again.