Hello, welcome to the latest in our series of videos looking at the updated Cambridge English Advanced or CAE exam which launches in 2015. My name's Peter Travis from Flo-Joe and in this video we're looking at Paper 2 - the Writing Paper.
The Writing Paper consists of two parts, Part 1 and Part 2. Part 1 is a compulsory essay question whilst Part 2 offers you a choice task types (a letter, a review a proposal or a report) and you have to choose one from a list of three. Let's look at some sample questions from the Cambridge English Advanced handbook.
So this is the Cambridge English Advanced or CAE 2015 handbook - you can download this from the Cambridge English website. As I mentioned earlier, there are two parts, Part 1 is an Essay question which you must answer and it needs to be between 220-260 words. The essay task has a similar format
It begins by setting the context for the essay, and here the context is that you've been listening to a radio programme about facilities which should receive money from a local authority. It tells us we've taken some notes whilst listening and we are presented with the notes here.
If we look below the notes we can see the instructions for the essay. The important things to bear in mind are:
you have to write about 2 of the choices, not all three
you have to explain which of the two facilities are most important with reasons
you don't have to use the opinions that were expressed in the radio show though they will often help you with ideas.
If we turn to the next page in the handbook we'll see Part 2 of the Writing paper. As we saw earlier, this contains three questions and you are required to choose one question to answer. As in Part 1, your answer needs to be between 220-260 words. The example tasks we can see here include a report, in this case a report for your manager about your job. Then there's a review - a review of book or film that focuses on somebody who has made an important contribution to society. And the third option is a letter - this is a letter to a friend and so will be informal, but a formal letter is also a possible task. One other task type that doesn't appear here but which could be included is a proposal.
We'll be posting a series of videos shortly to help you develop your writing skills but for the time being we have lots of useful Writing materials on the Flo-Joe website you may find useful.
We publish a free weekly writing task along with helpful hints and tips to give you ideas when planning your answer. Here you can see a 'Review of a book or film' with ideas for writing listed below.
You'll also find several interactive 'Makeovers'. These are sample student answers with feedback from Flo-Joe. Here's an example response to the Review we saw earlier.
There are exercises to help you with linking words, quizzes to test your skills in using formal expressions when Writing letters and quizzes to help you learn formal and informal vocabulary.
That's the end of this video. If you'd like further help with your Writing skills subscribe to our Youtube channel to get notification when further videos are available.
