FCE/CAE Writing: Getting Started

hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to my series on preparing for fc8 CAE writing that word writing usually make students sick in my class or they basically when I say today we're going to prepare an essays oh god everyone is writing and yes it is boring but unfortunately if you want to pass these exams you've got to do it now the thing is people often do quite badly at the writing so when I often see students like break down on their marks like in the past a lot of them suffered in writing and I have spent years trying to improve my way of teaching and to try and get students writing up their by using certain strategies you know bits of advice and constant practice and I'm going to share that all with you because I think I found a way because a lot of students over the past year have really complimented me on my sort of techniques and they have actually got very good writing results ok now I've decided to put FCP and CAE together because basically they're very very similar in what you have to do for the written exam the main difference is of course the CAE you need to produce something pretty phenomenal an FCE of course they expect so generally our language for that level it's quite simple but it's like the methods are exactly the same all right now we'll go through my advice okay and then I'm going to do another video after this on how to plan and that's the special one and that's going to make a difference alright let's look at number one how many in how long okay the fcd is 80 minutes there are two essays that means you have 14 minutes per essay the CIA you've got 90 minutes again you have two essays that is 45 minutes but essay yeah sounds impressive my mathematics is really good now I want you to pay attention to this now this is really important you have to plan your essays I don't come to that a bit later you have to dedicate 25 minutes to planning your essay they for FCE and then you have 15 minutes to copy it over to the exam paper now if you don't do that you're going to produce a shitty essay it's as simple as that or if you're naturally talented at writing congratulations but most students are not okay now let's go on to number two very very simple you have to know your essay there are there are different types for example you've got your part one kind of sort of more argumentative academic essay so to speak and part two so the second essay you've got your review your article email another sort of topical essay or and report there are less essays to do now after the new 2015 format compared to the previous CAE and FC format okay now let's start off with this the do's and the don'ts even before I tell me about the compulsory in part one essay on part two essays they mean nothing if you don't know that do's and the don'ts the do's and the don'ts are what you are required to know per essay so for example if you're going to write an article it often says in the textbooks we like to have a rhetorical question in the introduction or if you're going to write a report we like to have bullet points or in the introduction you should say how you collected the information what you're writing about and cetera et cetera now the question is where can you find these do's and don'ts now I will show you I have fantastic book by Pearson is called pre first gold it's quite a new book it's not FCE but it's basically preparing for se but at the back I don't have an FC or CAE book yeah the bag I'll hold it to the camera you will see Mike come here you will see like this essay and you will see these points around the essay and they're like advice on what you need to do for that particular essay and this one is the article so for example here it says do think of an interesting title so it says we need a title for the article do start with an interesting four that's obvious it says do use a direct question to involve the reader so you know something rhetorical to attract interest it makes your essay more colorful and as you can see on the report here it's the same thing we have all these do's and the don'ts around the essay if you buy a textbook like Pearson's Gold Series FCA or advanced or even complete or objective law you will find the same advice at the back of every textbook and you need to study those do's and the don'ts some textbooks will give you some different advice on what's required for si but you get the general idea of all is required for a particular essay again you need to know those like that so the moment you go into the exam and you choose a part so I'm going to write review you know exactly what you need to do you don't need to think about it okay because let's be honest my friends let's not argue with Cambridge's their exam let's make them happy let's do what they asked us to do okay because many students do not now part 1 is your compulsory essay which means you have to do it you don't have a choice and now this the format is quite standard for FCE and CAE this one is FCA it kind of looks like this ok so you have a task students so it should students have a long summer holiday or should terms be longer which is better for learning leisure activities and the holidays your own idea okay you can find such practice in all these kind of like trainers it's very very simple and so basically that would be your part one in the CAE is basically the same thing ok is basically the same and I will show some differences later ok part two is going to look something like this so sorry the light is reflecting so you've got like you know three essays and you choose one of them only one some students maybe two months before the exam so poor do I have to write all three essays I hit them really hard around the face because you should know after the first week of starting an FCE or CAE course the part one is compulsory part two you choose only one alright now as I said know your essay again it's like the dudes of the DOS you know tide I need a title do I need paragraph headings the register is very important register means style so if the question says you're writing to writing for a teenage magazine your style is going to be relatively semi formal or informal so colorful adjectives phrasal verbs maybe some informal idioms if for example you choose to write an essay and it says you're writing to the director of a school why blah blah blah then your English should be more formal okay that's a fundamental point and to get your marks and your marked on this you have to get the register right okay now just a little piece of advice you know a little kind of secret of the trade of course you have to have the right register if you're writing to like someone like a scientist or a director but if you choose say a particular register make sure you are consistent make sure it's the same style it will be very strange if you were to write say just like a letter of complaint and you say dear sir or madam I was utterly distressed that having purchased your product recently upon understanding that it was 40 I was upset and it was bad like really different style in that sentence you would suffer for that okay now a lot of you are going to be preparing for this exam without a teacher now I admire you for that because it's not easy you really need to have a teacher who has some experience in teaching FCA CAA for CP whatever because we sort of know how to mark alright now I'm going to tell you what I do Cambridge okay in their infinite wisdom really make it unclear what the difference is between AB and five AB and four and a bathrobe and five is basically the top mark that you can get for like your writing is like amazing then bad for is maybe with few more mistakes and ban free is basically more mistakes and in the teachers handbook it doesn't really purely define of what we're looking for okay so I'm going to give you this piece of advice now if you're preparing on your own now this is the sort of teachers handbook okay you can download this from Cambridge website for the course that you're doing alright now in this book okay if I sort of turn over it has an example sort of prudence or like a practice test like here like I showed you in the trainer and here what it has it actually has if I can show you this out of the light it has some example essays and these example essays have been given different marks so you can read through the handbook and go okay this essay has been given up bad for this one has been given a ban three this has been given a bad file so it kind of tells you what level you're aiming for okay what kind of language you need because I can promise you one thing boys and girls if you write an essay and you give it to ten different teachers you will get ten different marks I promise you so what I like to do when I mark in essays I always mark it down now that sounds really strict but I like to know that when my students go to the exam that you know they're they're writing more than they should if you understand like better than they should and then there's a prime or I got a a it in the exam is like yes I wonder why because I'm horrible alright so that is a kind of way to understand the benchmark the kind of essay level that you need to achieve of course if you want someone to market if you have that ability fantastic if you don't then you're going to approach a native online no native is going to mark an essay for free and I'm afraid I have lots and lots of friends followers I cannot mark 3,000 essays a week I'm afraid ok I would like to but unfortunately I probably died off the two days now you are marked on these things your marks on land which content communicative achievement and organization before 2015 there were just one global mark your essay now they're split into four pieces so if a teacher marks your essay generally you should be given sort of four different marks okay it doesn't matter if you're still given one to be honest the content is this now again you you can read through the teachers handbook and it will give you advice on what you need to do is mainly for teachers but students can read this the content is like have you answered the question so you've got like you know these tasks that I showed you from the trainer have you answered those questions now in the part one if you remember there were these three points okay and you kind of write the first one and so if you forget to cover the third point you're going to suffer you're going to lose some serious marks as a teacher are you ready for this I will fail a student for forgetting one point because it's a lack of discipline and basically the next time students write their essays there will be a lot more cautious there'll be more sort of focused on not missing that task point okay and the content also refers to expanding your ideas so I'll put this book down so when you expand your ideas of course you've got like three points to the part 1 or part 2 it says maybe a competition you're right about someone import it in your family say who they are why they're important and what they mean to you I mean there's a three small points you need to expand that and if the examiner things you have it expanded enough that it's not or that it just doesn't say much you're going to lose marks you need to expand it to the point that it really gives some sort of nice kind of information now also for the sort of content when I mark an essay I like to put myself into the position of the target reader so imagine if you are writing a let's say an email to me saying that you know you're suggesting to go to a movie because this is what it's like if I read your essay and I feel compelled to go and see that movie your English is banned good because you've had if I read your essays I like what are you saying here and you know it doesn't sound very convincing and you haven't really promoted the film then you're going to lose marks okay you don't use March it's not going to get a high one okay and so you know that is the sort of that that is how like to note your English is that good or not that's why you need to practice alright if your image is that good you will have that effect on me and believe me some students do alright you you're basically your communicative achievement it's basically like pretty much the same thing like in its sort of teachers book here and I go to that page it says the community of achievement is again you know your register is it the correct style you know for example is it laid out according ly to the task given does it hold the attention if you write about a complaint does it feel like it's a complaint that for that okay you have your organization your organization is are your paragraphs clearly organized does one paragraph flow into the other or do the ideas seem really disconnected right now for organization you need discourse markers now this course markers are those words like however furthermore in addition nevertheless on top of that etc etc to know you need to really learn these discourse markers and the actual register of the different discourse markers because some are formal some are informal and if you go to Michael swans Oxford English grammar course advanced the Green Bible page 262 if I'm not mistaken that's evidence that I have no friends or life or social life yeah page 262 there is a big unit on discourse markers that you can practice I strongly recommend it Michael Swann Oxford English grammar course advanced right and so yes about organizing your paragraphs with your discourse markers language of course you can't write an essay without it you're marked on of course your vocab your grammar your sort of disorder two main areas the you've got your accuracy and your range now accuracy is how well you use particular care occasions may be automatic all structures may be for trying to do something very complicated and you fail what would you know what you tried something complicated is FCE so we'll ignore it okay or maybe they wouldn't ignore CAA for example and you know if you're trying to use some nice idiomatic expressions but maybe you get like one of the words wrong leave is an article then of course the accuracy that will go down a little bit but from range that might be pretty good because you're showing the examiner you're trying to use a wide range of vocabulary so if you're going to have this problem like many students do and repeating the same word again and again oh is a big problem then this problem occurred then we have this problem than this problem epic fail facepalm okay hate repetition unless there's a very specific so words like if you're talking about the greenhouse effect you can't really find the synonym for that because you can have to use a greenhouse effect clean house effect but you can use your grandma of like substitution and ellipses to avoid constant repetition okay now the key is how to prepare for an FCE or CAE essay number one I suggested especially if you're preparing alone okay after following all of this you've do's and the don'ts no your essays etc how its marked I suggest this when you write an essay again I suggest leaving the essay for two weeks and then come back to it take your essay and improve it because when you improve it you'll think about what you've done you maybe think of some synonyms that you didn't know before and you challenge your mind you challenge your vocabulary database on your grammar database and you'll maybe like checked structures from your text books that all use an inversion here because it actually sounds a lot more colorful with it okay it's possible get it checked by a teacher because honestly if you're going to prepare for an exam you should get it checked because I'm going to tell you this I have known a lot of students who have prepared themselves for this exam and they don't do particularly well in the writing because they can't get it checked okay they try to follow maybe some bits and pieces online through the Cambridge Isolde website or whatever but if they don't have a teacher to check it you're not really going to know where you are on that band like been five four three or below a three as a fail okay basically I suggest if you really want to practice writing two essays per week or Fiera I've got time at least one if you're preparing yourself when my students in a nine-month course for the first sort of six months we do maybe maybe every four lessons and essay however about three months before the exam it's at least an essay or two essays every week to really practice and practice and get that ability to get the planning spot-on together VOC about to get that grammar out to make sure that we know our essays that we fulfill all of these points and therefore you get a difficut you get a band five and you come and you come and kiss my feet okay or maybe not right so basically that is the sort of starting point okay for your FCE or CAE writing now what I'm going to do I'm going to make a fantastic video on how to plan now this is the this is going to be the golden video okay hope that was useful for you if you have any questions or something maybe there's something that I didn't answer that you would like to know please leave a comment below please subscribe and share the video with everyone you know including strangers and traps okay have a good day everyone and I'll see you hopefully in a minute okay bye bye

Channel: Practice English with Paul

Views: 82,936

Keywords: fce, cae, writing, essay, 'fce writing', 'cae writing', 'cae essay', 'fce essay', exams, exam, cpe, ielts

Id: hw9BrHz5dtQ

Length: 19min 23sec (1163 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 14 2016