Hello Exam Seekers,
I’ve been working on the Cambridge C1: Advanced for a while now and last week I started posting the second writing task. If you don’t remember, or if you haven’t read any of the posts about the #CAE, here is a review:
C1: Advanced Reading and Use of English parts:
- Part 1: Multiple-choice cloze;
- Part 2: Open cloze;
- Part 3: Word formation;
- Part 4: Key word transformation;
- Part 5: Multiple Choice;
- Part 6: Cross-text multiple matching;
- Part 7: Part 7: Gapped text;
- Part 8: Multiple matching.
C1: Advanced Speaking parts:
C1: Advanced Writing parts:
Now, let’s remember the possibilities for Part 2: Situationally based writing task:
- letter/email;
- proposal;
- report;
- review.
I have already given an example of REPORT, now, let’s go to the second possibility: REVIEW!
A Review may be about a book, magazine, film, play or concert; it may also be about a product or a service. A review in the Cambridge English: Advanced Writing paper does not merely ask for a general description of the thing reviewed, but requires an evaluation of its suitability for a particular purpose or audience. The target reader is specified in the task, and candidates should be encouraged to use this information when choosing appropriate ideas and language to include in their response.
Important!!!!
- A title is advisable.
- Think what your are trying to achieve and, in the introduction, DO give your reader and indication of the structure of your review. You should also raise a question in your reader’s mind.
- Start a new paragraph for every item/aspect you are addressing in your review.
- Try to make it interesting by using a wide range of vocabulary: colourful, lively language; comparisons to describe something; specialised topic vocabulary.
- DO give your assessment of what you are reviewing and DO NOT forget to cover all the points mentioned in the task input.
- DO include a final recommendation or evaluation in the final paragraph.
Useful language:
What I liked:
- What I liked most was …..
- The thing I liked most was ….
- I was pleasantly surprised by …..
- ….. would appeal to …..
- If you get a chance to ….
What I disliked:
- What I disliked most was …..
- I was disappointed by/with ……
The Audacity of Hope
I have recently read a book called The Audacity of Hope. This book was written in 2006 and tells a bit of Barak Obama’s story. This is a very important person to the world, especially to the lives of thousands of people in the US and in North America, because he made the change happen, and as this change happened, a great contribution to the society was made and keep being made. So I will show my positive and negative views of the book and give the conclusion I got when I finished reading it. And maybe you will have the same opinion once you read the book yourself.
As you can see, I put a title and I gave some pieces of info of how my review would be organized. Then, I start the second paragraph repeating a little bit of what I mentioned above.
This book tells the story of Barak Obama, a poor black man from Hawaii, who made his way up to become the first black American president. His life was not easy, and it’s interesting how the book mentions how racism had affected his life, especially when he was a child and a teenager. It appealed to me to see how he handled with the prejudice he faced all these years because this racism kept on hurting him in college where he had to fight his way to get noticed. However, he used this pain and his anger to make himself a great person with clear objectives to help society. It was like fuel to the fire he planted inside himself.
As you can see, here I mention the positive points of the narrative, and now I’m going to mention some bad parts. If you don’t have positive or negative parts you can always make up, because this is just assessing the way you make a review, they are not going to check if what you wrote is true or false, especially because there are so many people taking this exam with so many texts to write and to read that it makes it impossible. Unless the book review is about their offered reading.
Along the book, you can see that he started finding connections that led him to the white house. However, it was disappointing to read just a few pages before he decided to become president and how he really got the post. I expected it would give us much more information about his path than it provided. He was still facing racism, which was expected and what the book made sure the readers read, but it is still missing parts about how he finally got his post and how he handled it.
Even though I expected a little more of this book, it represents well the audacity of hope and how Barak Obama never quit. I recommend this reading so people can understand how Barak Obama got where he got because this made a real impact on my life. I feel that “I can” since he could. Also, I learned a lot about his past and how he was able to handle things and why he is so recognized. Now, my next reading is one which tells me about his 8 years os being POTUS.
As you can see, I wrapped up repeating some positive and good aspects and answering the questions mentioned above. It’s really important that you answer the questions required.
Try and do this review yourself and see if you can produce some examples that will for sure help you when writing the official CAE Written paper.
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Have a great week,
Patty