CAE Report Writing

Table of Contents

What is a CAE Report?

A CAE Report is a writing task which can appear in part 2 of the CAE (C1 Advanced) writing paper. Part 2 of the writing paper consists of three questions from five different types of writing. There is therefore a 60% chance that a report will appear in the exam.

CAE reports are often directed towards bosses or colleagues. For this reason, they should be written in formal or neutral language. It is important to pay attention to the target reader as this is your main indication for the type of language to use. C1 reports often ask students to summarise a situation and often ask for advice on future actions.

CAE Report Samples Instructions

I hope you enjoyed the video above and found it useful! This is what you should do now:

1. Watch and understand the marking criteria that examiners use - video below. If you know what the examiners want, you will get better marks in the exam!

2. See if you can spot any mistakes in the students' CAE Report writing samples below.

3. Complete the examiner assessment scale template with your thoughts and marks.

4. Read the CAE report examples with my comments and corrections in (bold brackets like this below).

5. Read my comments and marks on the sample examiner assessment scales.

6. Give somebody a hug! Why not 😉 !?

Student's CAE Report Writing With My Comments

Nowadays promotion/marketing is very important for a company's success. Only the ones that sell themselves the best to the public, win the most costumers (spelling mistake - you should have written 'customers'). Therefore it is important to make a respectable and reliable impression. Losts (spelling mistake - 'lots' - be careful of your spelling in the exam, as I suggest in my CAE writing course, always leave 5 minutes at the end to read your work and watch for spellings) of big companies employ a whole department of advertisers, while small firms give commission to advertising agencies. No matter on (remove the word 'on' - it is not needed in this sentence) which way it was achieved, certainly any advertisement is the result of an extensive process.

Looking at commercials on television, it is obivious (spelling mistake - you should write 'obvious') that their production is very time-consuming. That means it takes lots of staff to produce such an advertisement, what (wrong word - you should use the relative pronoun 'which') in the end creates lots of vacancies (What do you mean exactly? It creates vacancies in other areas?). Besides commercials reach lots of people, especially in between of (remove the word 'of' here) popular shows or movies.

On the other side, the high expenses the company had (you should say 'expenses companies have' - because you are talking in general) to spend on the (remove the word 'the') extensive production (change the word 'production' for 'marketing'), eventually reflect on the costumer ('customer') through an increase of ('increase in' - this is a collocation, you should study collocations, English word families and sentences structures before the exam, these will also be very important for the 'Use of English' paper) prices. Advertisements on television also cause annoyance to the viewers, as they are responsible for interruptions during the programme, often are especially loud and contain rediculous (this is a spelling mistake - 'ridiculous') or unreliable informations ('information' is uncountable so remove 's' from the end of the word).

Another form of advertising can be found in papers, magazines or as catalog (this is another spelling mistake, 'catalogue'. You also need to write the indefinite article 'a' before the word 'catalogue') e.g. for fashion. The positive aspect of this kind of advertisement is that consumers are able to easily avoid them in the case that they aren't interested, or keep them as a reminder to buy the product or to show it to someone else.

Unfortunately printed advertisements consume big amounts ('large amounts' is a better collocation to use here) of paper, as companies tend to give out far too many copies, what (you should use the relative pronoun which here) harms the environment by (don't say 'by') a lot. Besides paper advertisements often can't keep up with tv (this is a bit informal, I talk more about your language in my critique on the assessment scale below) spots, as these often are more exciting and therefore stay better in peoples' minds (it would be better to say: 'people remember them').

Due to environmental reasons I suggest to keep the consumption of paper down by only giving out advertisements on order instead of handing them out randomly. Otherwise companies should make an effort to produce creative and entertaining commercials and publish them in (you should use the word 'on' here instead of 'in', this is an example of another collocation. I go into more detail about collocations in my CAE Use of English course) the internet rather than on television, where people watch them without the annoyance that their favourite movie was just interrupted.

Examiner's Assessment Scale With My Comments

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You can see videos which I have made for all the different parts of the CAE writing exam in my full C1 Advanced writing course. There are some more details and free preview lessons below. Alternatively, if you want to prepare yourself for other parts of the exam and save lots of money and time avoiding language schools, then the first place I recommend you start is my CAE preparation online page. This page shows you some of the best methods to prepare for every paper in the CAE exam! This page also shows you some really useful phrases for writing a C1 Advanced report.

Class Activities

You can follow the instructions below and get your students to do them for homework but if you prefer working 100% on computer, the instructions on this page will be better for you:

1. Become a member of my website and get loads more exercises and Cambridge exam preparation materials.
2. Read this report then write a plan for it here. If you can't remember how long I recommend to plan for, read this page.
3. Find the mistakes on this report answer.
4. Complete a report assessment for the answer.
5. Are your mistakes the same as the ones I note here.
6. Is your assessment similar to mine here.
7. Continually update this form.

Subscale	Mark (1-5)	Commentary
Content
Communicative Achievement
Organisation
Language

Subscale	Mark (1-5)	Commentary
Content
Communicative Achievement
Organisation
Language