Examinations for the Certificate of Proficiency in English (CPE) are one of the most widely recognized English-language exams that certify one has mastered the language at C2 level (based on the Common European Framework of Reference or CEFR for languages).    It is not without apprehension that candidates sitting this exam prepare to tackle Paper 2 -- the dreaded Writing section.  This post will outline the various points candidates should keep in mind when dealing with the essay in Part 1 of Paper 2 and provide tips to help with the whole task through a step-by-step approach.  

Whet her you are preparing for a B 2, C1 or C2 language examinat ion in English, at some point during the test you are required to maintain discussion for about 1-2 minutes on your own. This is so mething students sometimes find difficult to do as they have very few ideas about what to say after having stated one or two basic points.  Regardless of the awarding body and certificate you are sitting an exam in (IELTS , Cambridge CPE or FCE/ First for Schools, ECPE or ECCE, MSU CELP or CELC, LRN, TOEIC, ESB, PTE) , you will have to find ways to ex pand you r answers to show that y ou can speak English w ith out needing a nyone 's help . To do this, you need to keep the examiner from having to ask you o ne o r two follow-up questions in order to el icit a longer res ponse from you. I n oth er words, if a task requires a can didate to speak for about two minutes on a t opic , and the candidate manages to speak for a min ute and 10 seconds only, the examiner wi ll have to ask a...

In the first article in this series of posts, Essay Writing: The Overall Organization of an Essay , I pointed out what the general layout of an academic essay should look like. Today, we're going to see how the first paragraph of such an essay should be organized. By way of reminder, an entirely different organization is possible, but for the sake of helping exam takers sitting timed EFL (English as a foreign language and not the English Football League!) examinations, I stick to one particular style so that test-takers can focus on one kind of layout which should save time. Note also that I'm writing about academic essays and not letters or emails, reports, proposals, newspaper or magazine articles, or narratives. Those varieties of written work have their own traits and therefore need to be discussed in separate blog posts (which I hope to eventually address at some later time). But for now, let's get back to our academic essay introduction.

Let's bring different cases to the forefront and see if any of them fit the predicament you're in. Case 1: A teacher has told you to write an essay.  Case 2: You are preparing to sit an exam that determines your level of English and which includes a section that instructs you to write an academic essay. Case 3: You are a teacher who needs to explain how students should organize essays and aren't quite sure where to start from. All three of these cases have a common denominator called "essay" which needs to be tackled. What I've seen throughout the years is that students find the task of writing an essay daunting. The difficulties they tend to have are the following:

Exams which test your knowledge of the English language test oral competency in their majority. The topics on which the questions are based are numerous, so it is much more difficult to predict what candidates will be confronted with on the day of the test. However, no matter the level of the test, the awarding body or the format of the oral examination, what can be predicted is the type of question that will be asked.  In this blog post, I will deal with what I call two-sided opinion questions and the steps candidates can follow to tackle them effectively and achieve a better score than if they ha d no idea what to ex pect before entering the exam room. Examples will follow for clarification, natu rally .

After Part 1 of the oral exam (find a list of questions here ), Part 2 of the IELTS exam requires candidates to talk for about two minutes on a topic given by the examiner.  This blog post will provide you with a series of questions that could be asked at this stage of the test.  Make sure you've read IELTS Speaking:The Basics so your answers will make it possible for you to score higher.  After the questions, read some tips on how to answer your question for Part 2.

The following are key points to remember about a formal, academic piece of writing, whether it is for an exam or an assignment, an essay or a letter.  There are conventions that need to be followed so here is a short list of things to keep in mind when writing to someone who is not an acquaintance or the finished work counts towards a grade.

The following information can be used by any test taker, not only ECPE candidates.  Taking a C2-level oral examination is never easy. Apart from the usual stress due to lack of time allowed for reflection, uneasiness with regard to face-to-face contact and fear of making mistakes that will lead to failure, there is also the issue of ideas. Candidates often question whether on the actual day of their exam they will be clearheaded and creative enough to have something to say. Not all people are made to respond quickly. This may sound like a prejudicial statement, but experience has shown that people don't make the same connections others do when they hear a word spoken. And I say again, this is not prejudicial because it doesn't imply that someone who isn't quick to respond is slow-witted. No, it just means that different people have different processes unfolding in their minds every second they stand breathing in front of you, so it is natural that while one person...

In my 20 or so years of teaching, I've come to the conclusion that the IELTS Speaking component is the most innocuous part of the test. Other English-language examinations last longer, have more complicated tasks which need to be fulfilled, include two candidates who are assessed simultaneously and involve other factors that could create more stressful conditions for candidates. The IELTS is straightforward -- which means there's a catch.  The proof lies in the following case: I had one particular student whose parents (one of them, to be more precise) was a native speaker of English. This student, a girl, had been brought up in a foreign country where English was taught as a secondary language in schools, but who spoke English at home with her native English-speaking parent. She was, in effect, bilingual even though there were sporadic errors in more advanced grammatical structures and, as is natural, gaps in more advanced vocabulary. However, her pronunciation was impec...