Consejos y tipos de Writing para exámenes Cambridge
Tipos de Writings para exámenes de Cambridge
You have 90 minutes to write two texts. Each text should be about 220-260 words long. Part 1 is always an essay, while in part 2 you have a choice of 3 tasks to choose only one (letter/email, proposal, report, review).
TYPES OF WRITING IN THE ADVANCED CAE EXAM
You should invest some time making sure you know the difference between a letter, an essay, a report and a proposal... Here are a few quick tips, but we do recommend you to sign up to one of out Cambridge courses where cover all writing in depth.
How does Cambridge correct writings?
The examiners assess you on 5 elements:
Target:
Have you targeted and completed the objective of the type of writing?
Content:
Did you do the task you were asked to do?
Register:
Did you use the right tone and level of formality?
Organisation:
Did you link paragraphs together? Is there a logical flow?
Range:
Did you show off your sparkling vocabulary or did you merely use First Certificate words? Did you make lots of grammar mistakes?
Target
Apart from completing the target of each specific writing. We should take our time to plan out our writing. Good targeting includes dealing with good range:
Where can I use a passive form?
Where can I use an inversion?
What CAE-level vocabulary do I know about this topic, and where can I use it?
How do I link from one paragraph to the next?
Content
The first thing you're assessed on is your content. That basically means reading the task carefully and doing what you are told to do. In part 1 you are given three bullet points but are asked to talk about two of them. You're also given some opinions on the topic that you can use if you want. You have to include all content points in the writing, if one of those points are omitted you will loose most of the your score for this part. This is why it i essential to include all bullet point and ideas set out in the writing task.
Register
What´s up mate? Or Dear Sir or Madam
Which would be better? Well, it depends who you're writing to If your task is to write a report for your 'serious' organisation you should use a formal tone. If you're writing a magazine article for teenagers you can be more informal. The main tip is to be consistent. Students often write a report that is 95% formal, and then throw in some exclamation points, slang, contractions, and informal vocabulary. That's bad because it suggest you don't have control over your tone and register. We can help you out to learn more about formal vs informal english with us at English Examination Institute.
Range
Organising a text, using linking words, and getting all the content points is a great start, but for a high grade you'll need to use advanced vocabulary and more difficult sentence structures. In the planning stage of the exam think about which high-level words you know for that topic and think in which paragraph you can use them. Then you need to use a variety of structures like passives, inversions, cleft sentences, questions, sentences with semi-colons. The more variety the better! As well as a variety of sentence lengths.
Organization
Cambridge loves linking words and cohesive devices. These are bits of text like 'firstly', 'whereas', 'in addition', 'however', and so on. Properly used, they will make your writing flow and make your text easier to read. You can't do well in CAE without using these phrases.