Hi Lorenza,
Your writing tasks for the Advanced exam are below, I’ve started a new block with your Proficiency tasks. Your most recent task will always be the first one in this new block.
Essay–Reading
Content: 4 You cover all the main points and you give your opinion. I feel like you could have addressed the first text more in your paragraph giving your own view. You come close with the last sentence but you don’t actually draw an explicit connection.
Communicative Achievement: 4.5 The task has been completed well and all the conventions are used appropriately. Nice simple opening and a deft summary/closing at the end
Organisation: 5 Very clear organization throughout.
Language: 4 Just a few slips on the keyboard and a couple areas where things could possible be better. Overall a really good job.
Overall: 4.375 Great! You’ve written a really solid essay, covering all the requirements of the task within the word limit which is a real achievement. On top of that, the organization is clear and the quality of the language is clearly at the proficiency level. Well done!
You can see my specific comments on your writing by going to the Google Doc. I’ve used some abbreviations in my comments, these abbreviations are explained here. Read the feedback and try to make the changes I’ve suggested. I have copied the document to my Google Drive so I will get an email when you start making changes 🙂 . You don’t need to be logged in to Google to do this, you can just go and start editing “anonymously”. Good luck with the corrections and please feel free to send any further questions you have.
Article–Travel Changes Lives
Content: 5 Very good coverage of the three main task requirements
Communicative Achievement: 4 You’ve really nailed the style of writing that they’re after. The target reader can really identify with the opening sentence and the little conclusion is exactly what the editor would be looking for. The only thing missing is a clever title.
Organisation: 5 Terrific work not only in the paragraphing, but the structures within and between the sentences: one day in 2008, what I wasn’t expecting though, back home, so I decided, in spite of, and now… These all help the reader anticipate and structure the text.
Language: 4.5 I am really impressed! You’ve (seemingly) effortlessly woven a number of really advanced structures into the text and it’s virtually error-free. There are a couple of things that just look like slips rather than a lack of understanding. Your vocabulary is spot-on throughout the text, your word choice is really fantastic.
Overall: 4.6 Tremendous! You should be really proud of this! You’ve absolutely perfectly captured the kind of aspirational feel-good helping others article that they were asking for. Add a title and you could publish it for real!
You can see my specific comments on your writing by going to the Google Doc. I’ve used some abbreviations in my comments, these abbreviations are explained here. Read the feedback and try to make the changes I’ve suggested. I have copied the document to my Google Drive so I will get an email when you start making changes 🙂 . You don’t need to be logged in to Google to do this, you can just go and start editing “anonymously”. Good luck with the corrections and please feel free to send any further questions you have.
Essay–food habits
Content: 4 Excellent summary of 2 points from each excerpt. You give your opinion about one of the points (convenience foods), but nothing about any of the other points.
Communicative Achievement: 4 Again, really good work summarising the main points and relating your argument to the text
Organisation: 4 Very clear, but you went a little bit over the word limit.
Language: 3 There are a couple of mistakes that you want to eliminate (“On conclusion”) but the range you show is outstanding (“not only does one…”, “Be it a wedding or…”).
Overall: 3.75 Fantastic! As I say in the comments, this is a functional task as opposed to persuasive or emotive. The challenge really is how to express all of the information and stay under the word limit. You’ve achieved the functional part very well while still managing to show your own style and flair (which is easier in the last 2 paragraphs) which is why you got such a good mark. Well done!
You can see my specific comments on your writing by going to the Google Doc. I’ve used some abbreviations in my comments, these abbreviations are explained here. Read the feedback and try to make the changes I’ve suggested. I have copied the document to my Google Drive so I will get an email when you start making changes 🙂 . You don’t need to be logged in to Google to do this, you can just go and start editing “anonymously”. Good luck with the corrections and please feel free to send any further questions you have.
Report–City Park
Content: 4 Nice job in giving multiple examples in each section and plenty of details about them. All of it was relevant to the task.
Communicative Achievement: 2 Most of it is extremely well done, but there was a slight lack of clarity or work required of the reader to find the second point to be improved. There is room for improvement on this point.
Organisation: 3 Good job. Clear and appropriate structure.
Language: 2 There is, as usual, plenty of really good language. However, there are a few errors and slips which prevent this piece from having the consistency that is required to get a passing mark in this category.
Overall: 2.75 This is a fine score, it’s nothing at all to worry about. You got good marks for content and organization which you always want to have. The other categories are the really difficult ones but you have given yourself a good foundation and you’ve made a good effort.
You can see my specific comments on your writing by going to the Google Doc. I’ve used some abbreviations in my comments, these abbreviations are explained here. Read the feedback and try to make the changes I’ve suggested. I have copied the document to my Google Drive so I will get an email when you start making changes 🙂 . You don’t need to be logged in to Google to do this, you can just go and start editing “anonymously”. Good luck with the corrections and please feel free to send any further questions you have.
Letter–Friendship
Content: 1 You’ve written a lovely piece, but it doesn’t really give enough attention to the demands of the task: (1) describe a special friendship that is important to you, and (2) assess the difficulties of maintaining friendships over time, etc. All the really, really nice stuff that you wrote is not really relevant to the task.
Communicative Achievement: 1 In the task description for a letter, they write “It is important that a letter begins and ends appropriately, it may be appropriate at the beginning to explain the reason for writing and the letter should have a suitable conclusion.” I don’t think a different conclusion is needed in this case, but there’s really nothing that marks this piece of writing as a letter or as a response to something. It reads almost like it is the original article that the task refers to. The Guardian’s letter writers usually do a good job of indicating why they are writing, compare that with the letters in the Independent which seem (to me) a little apropos of nothing, but more “I am really angry about THING and I am going to tell you about it”. I don’t mean to imply that you sound like an unhinged madwoman, I just wanted to give examples of published letters by native speakers that aren’t as good as some other ones.
Organisation: 4 Very well done.
Language: 4 Excellent. Really lovely expressions, great range, very good use of grammar to express your ideas.
Overall: 2 Welcome to the big league! The Advanced exam asks you to write at a good academic level. I think the Proficiency asks you to write at a professional level. The standards here are extremely high. The good news is that I think the language that you provided is absolutely of Proficiency level, so all you have to do is learn to be extremely disciplined in your approach to the content and the style of the task. The bad news is that this will be boring, but you can definitely do it!
You can see my specific comments on your writing by going to the Google Doc. I’ve used some abbreviations in my comments, these abbreviations are explained here. Read the feedback and try to make the changes I’ve suggested. I have copied the document to my Google Drive so I will get an email when you start making changes 🙂 . You don’t need to be logged in to Google to do this, you can just go and start editing “anonymously”. Good luck with the corrections and please feel free to send any further questions you have.
Here are your writing tasks from the Advanced exam:
Content: very good, you have addressed all of the notes and made a clear recommendation.
Organisation and cohesion: OK. The organization could be stronger. The heading for part 2 is not really specific enough to help the principal find the information he is looking for–it’s really a title for the whole proposal (although proposals don’t generally have titles). If you were the principal, you would want to quickly find the information supporting the Sports Hall and then the information supporting the Music Centre. Make one section for each. The cohesion is also OK (this is the “flow” and “connections” between your sentences and paragraphs) but most of your paragraphs are only one sentence. Try to have at least 2-3 sentences per paragraph (except for the introduction and conclusion, those are OK to be short).
Range: you show a good range of vocabulary and structures.
Accuracy: overall your accuracy is very good, you don’t have many errors and for the most part they are quite minor and a result of ambitious grammar or vocabulary choices.
Appropriacy of register and format: generally good with just a couple of slips in register. The format could be improved with better headings.
Target reader: would be informed.
Overall: Band 3. This is a strong piece of writing, by simply improving the organisation and headings you would move it close to a band 4 (band 5 is the maximum). Familiarize yourself with the different formats that may be on the exam and you should have no problems on exam day.
You can see my specific comments on your writing by going to the Google Doc. I’ve used some abbreviations in my comments, these abbreviations are explained here. Read the feedback and try to make the changes I’ve suggested. I have copied the document to my Google Drive so I will get an email when you start making changes 🙂 . You don’t need to be logged in to Google to do this, you can just go and start editing “anonymously”. Good luck with the corrections and please feel free to send any further questions you have.
Revisions
Very nice work! You can see my comments on your corrections in the Google Doc. Now you are definitely at a Band 4–great job!
Organization and cohesion: I made some changes. Look at the paragraphs in the document you emailed me and then look at the Google Doc. In the Google Doc, there are 4 paragraphs: introduction, why 16-year-olds are already basically adults, what about the good kids, conclusion. In yours, we have 4 “paragraph groups” and I don’t know what you wanted: are they all new paragraphs and sometimes you pressed “enter” twice by mistake? Or are they not new paragraphs and you pressed “enter” by mistake? The point is: something looks wrong because we only have one kind of paragraph and we indicate them consistently in whatever we are writing. Some magazines or websites will use a single line break, others will use double, but nobody uses both in the same piece. So you can choose whichever you want, just be consistent! 🙂
Range: your grammatical range is very good and your vocabulary is good as well. It’s difficult to write about teenagers without using the same word more than once, I think you did well!
Accuracy: very good. There are very few errors and absolutely no low-level errors.
Appropriacy of register and format: Good! Formal but not too formal and consistent throughout.
Target reader: would be informed.
Overall: band 4 Great work! I have decided to overlook the length for this exercise and to be honest, I think the paragraph thing is not going to cost a lot of points (and like I said, it almost never happens on paper). It’s a consistent and well-argued essay and would be very good in the exam.
You can see my specific comments on your writing by going to the Google Doc. I’ve used some abbreviations in my comments, these abbreviations are explained here. Read the feedback and try to make the changes I’ve suggested. I have copied the document to my Google Drive so I will get an email when you start making changes 🙂 . You don’t need to be logged in to Google to do this, you can just go and start editing “anonymously”. Good luck with the corrections and please feel free to send any further questions you have.
Organization and cohesion: Good. It looks the way a report should, which is very important in this task. One possible are of improvement is if you separated the good and bad things in different sections under the conference. That section could be broken up so that the principal can find specific info more easily. Remember, reports are written for people who don’t have time to read them!
Range: Excellent! You show a lot of different structures and synonyms. You use a lot of expressions in exactly the right places.
Accuracy: Excellent! I think there are only 3 things I would consider “errors”, great job!
Appropriacy of register and format: Very nice. Appropriate and consistent.
Target reader: would be informed, but see the comment above about organization.
Overall: band 4 Well done! The writing is organized, well-written and has a great “flow” between the sections. Just about everything is exactly what the reader would expect. The one area which is keeping you from receiving the top score is the organization–it’s not bad now, but it could be a little better and then this would really be perfect! But even with this consideration, this is a really excellent piece of writing for the exam and you should be pleased with it.
You can see my specific comments on your writing by going to the Google Doc. I’ve used some abbreviations in my comments, these abbreviations are explained here. Read the feedback and try to make the changes I’ve suggested. I have copied the document to my Google Drive so I will get an email when you start making changes 🙂 . You don’t need to be logged in to Google to do this, you can just go and start editing “anonymously”. Good luck with the corrections and please feel free to send any further questions you have.
Organisation and cohesion: good organisation between paragraphs. This follows the expected format of a letter of complaint exactly. There was a small problem in the introduction and the use of “besides” (a tricky word) but overall very good.
Range: excellent use of appropriate expressions and some nice collocations as well (unmitigated disaster–brilliant!).
Accuracy: OK, there are a few “slips” where you are close to the correct phrase or word and a couple of small grammar errors.
Appropriacy of register and format: very good with just one phrase that was a little too informal.
Target reader: would be well-informed.
Overall: Band 3. Your range, coverage of the content points and organisation make this a definite pass, but there are just a few too many of the small errors to get to a band 4.
You can see my specific comments on your writing by going to the Google Doc. I’ve used some abbreviations in my comments, these abbreviations are explained here. Read the feedback and try to make the changes I’ve suggested. I have copied the document to my Google Drive so I will get an email when you start making changes 🙂 . You don’t need to be logged in to Google to do this, you can just go and start editing “anonymously”. Good luck with the corrections and please feel free to send any further questions you have.
Content: good work, this covers all the points well.
Organisation and cohesion: nice work, everything is well-developed and well-connected.
Range: very nice, you show a good range of phrases and collocations.
Accuracy: good work, there are only a couple of real errors, the others are just different ways of saying something.
Appropriacy of register and format: good, you are using a nice familiar style and it’s pretty consistent. You mentioned in your email that you thought it was too formal so I’ve highlighted some words/phrases that are more formal. If you want to, try looking at those and making some changes and see if that makes things sound better.
Target reader: would be well-informed.
Overall: Band 4. The content, style, organisation and cohesion of this writing are very strong and the reader gets exactly what they expect. There are some mistakes to correct but it’s still very good! Nice work!
You can see my specific comments on your writing by going to the Google Doc. I’ve used some abbreviations in my comments, these abbreviations are explained here. Read the feedback and try to make the changes I’ve suggested. I have copied the document to my Google Drive so I will get an email when you start making changes 🙂 . You don’t need to be logged in to Google to do this, you can just go and start editing “anonymously”. Good luck with the corrections and please feel free to send any further questions you have.
Organisation and cohesion: very nice, the structure is exactly what is expected and the ideas are deftly linked.
Range: excellent, the range of vocabulary and different sentence structures is very impressive and used effectively to persuade the reader.
Accuracy: very good, the prepositions I highlighted are acceptable although not really preferred and they do not affect the meaning at all.
Appropriacy of register and format: very good, just one slight deviation. In general, adjectives made by adding -y to a noun (edge) have more formal equivalents that you can use.
Target reader: would be well-informed.
Overall: Band 5. Top marks! Excellent work! Please don’t take this the wrong way, but had you written this before for someone else? It seems very polished and professional and has none of the little mistakes that are common when writing a timed task. If you did this in 45 minutes and this was the final result, figure out what you did differently because this is really really great work! And if you did do it for someone else it’s still very good!
You can see my specific comments on your writing by going to the Google Doc. I’ve used some abbreviations in my comments, these abbreviations are explained here. Read the feedback and try to make the changes I’ve suggested. I have copied the document to my Google Drive so I will get an email when you start making changes 🙂 . You don’t need to be logged in to Google to do this, you can just go and start editing “anonymously”. Good luck with the corrections and please feel free to send any further questions you have.
