Help with writing Reviews

Some general advice from Las Rozas teachers about writing a review:

Remember the usual elements -

- answer the exact question

- think about the style, format and presentation

- decide carefully on your number of paragraphs

You'll also need some more specialist language too - specifically:

- some language for opinions

- descriptive words

(for example suitable adjectives and adverb+adjective combinations)

- specialised vocabulary for films, books or whatever

For example, do you know which words here are for which media?

Soundtrack, chapter, script, screenplay, plot, titles, set, location, scenery, star., co-star..

To help a little, there's nothing wrong with taking ideas from the net, so here are a couple of places to look for reviews that are not too colloquial (which many magazines and websites are).

http://www-amazon.co.uk/ - just look for comments on almost anything - from cds and movies to hairdryers and food mixers!

http://www.darkhorizons.com/ - specialist (and longer) movie reviews

Remember - when you write, you can use the net for ideas. But, DO NOT copy chunks of text - you lose marks if we think your work is not original enough.

Help with writing Reviews

Some general advice from Las Rozas teachers about writing a review:

Remember the usual elements -

- answer the exact question

- think about the style, format and presentation

- decide carefully on your number of paragraphs

You'll also need some more specialist language too - specifically:

- some language for opinions

- descriptive words

(for example suitable adjectives and adverb+adjective combinations)

- specialised vocabulary for films, books or whatever

For example, do you know which words here are for which media?

Soundtrack, chapter, script, screenplay, plot, titles, set, location, scenery, star., co-star..

To help a little, there's nothing wrong with taking ideas from the net, so here are a couple of places to look for reviews that are not too colloquial (which many magazines and websites are).

http://www-amazon.co.uk/ - just look for comments on almost anything - from cds and movies to hairdryers and food mixers!

http://www.darkhorizons.com/ - specialist (and longer) movie reviews

Remember - when you write, you can use the net for ideas. But, DO NOT copy chunks of text - you lose marks if we think your work is not original enough.

Whiteboard grab: Ingredients for a Review

From January 25th, 6 key things for a review. Apologies for the poor photo. That disappearing word in the third point is "recommendation"!

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Useful Links

An FCE blog with material for lots of different parts of the exam is here.

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Questions, Questions

A recent email question from a student here:

I came up with a doubt yesterday, because I didn't know the difference between "be in time" and "be on time".

Thinka bout if you know the difference. Here's the teacher's reply - scroll over it to see if you were right.

Trains, buses, planes, English classes (hopefully), concerts, museums & shops open, depart or start and arrive or finish on time (rather than late).

People try to arrive in time (rather than late) for the start/departure of all of those.

If you arrive in the nick of time, you'd be relieved (and perhaps out of breath) not to have missed something!

You can send similar doubt to us as bclasrozas[at]gmail[dot]com - we'll answer the most useful ones here.

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Tips for Writing Articles

Additional advice to help you with articles is now on the download site here.

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FCE and CAE Weekly Writing Activity 2.1

Go here and go to your level page for this week's task which is a download connected to writing articles.

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