A8: A Question from a Student

An incoming email from a student this week:

I was just choosing the writing for next week when a doubt came up to my mind, how many kind of writings are there? A contribution to a leaflet, an essay, an article, a report, a letter, a review, any else?

Our reply:

Roughly (and from memory!) -

Review, proposal/report, contribution, information sheet/leaflet, competition entry, formal email/letter, essay

Some of those overlap, and some are not precisely defined. "Competition Entry" in particular seems to offer lots of flexibility in format, it's the functions, formality and vocabulary that seem to be the key there.

One other: Informal email could be in the list as some of the questions (Compeition Entry, perhaps for obe) could be answered with one, depending on the formality implied or asked for in the question.

And for anyone else in doubt:

Use this blogspot post to check and we'd strongly recommen a tutorial if you're still in doubt.

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First Application Letters

Go to the Prospects UK website for some very useful language to give your application impact. Add all the good stuff to your list and be sure to use this page when doing any formal writing homeowrk in the future.

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FCE Weekly Activity 2.6: Application Letters

Go to the Prospects UK website for some very useful language to give your application impact. Add all the good stuff to your list and be sure to use this page when doing any formal writing homeowrk in the future.

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Our Advice on Writing

Five Key points

- read the question very carefully and identify necessary functions to perform

- list language to achieve functions identified above (in the appropriate formality)

- work out the vocab topic(s) and list expressions/words you know you are going to use

- decide how many paragraphs and sum up their contents in two or three words (eg - what function does each one perform?)

- have a checklist for error correction and proofreading

- allocate 5 minutes to this

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Our Advice on Writing

Five Key points

- read the question very carefully and identify necessary functions to perform

- list language to achieve functions identified above (in the appropriate formality)

- work out the vocab topic(s) and list expressions/words you know you are going to use

- decide how many paragraphs and sum up their contents in two or three words (eg - what function does each one perform?)

- have a checklist for error correction and proofreading

- allocate 5 minutes to this

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FCE & CAE Weekly Task 2.5 Study a Review

If you go to our download page here, you'll find a link to a Word document of a review called "CAE Question 0."

This is around CAE level and length, but is an FCE-style question.

On page 1 you'll find some work to do and the question. On page 2, our answer. One thing we want you to do is check it for basic spelling and grammar errors. How many can you find in 5 minutes? (There are a lot, maybe more than we intended!)

FInd a highlighted version and answers on page 3.

CAE A Review for you to review

Go to the download site here to take a look at an example of a pass-level review from an A8 student written this month.

Thanks to the kind individual who was happy to share their work!

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