CAE · Writing — Formal & Informal Tasks (Part 2) · South Korea
Writing — Formal & Informal Tasks (Part 2) for the CAE Exam — Korean candidates
10% of the CAE test plan. Writing a letter, report, review, or proposal at C1 level for a specific audience and purpose. Calibrated for Korean candidates.
Most exam coaching covers the curriculum at the same depth across all topics. That misses the asymmetry of high-stakes testing: a few topics carry disproportionate weight on the score. Writing — Formal & Informal Tasks (Part 2) sits at roughly 10% of the Cambridge Advanced (C1) content distribution — CAE Writing Part 2 offers a choice: proposal, report, review, or letter/email. At C1, the register, format, and purpose of each task type must be precisely observed. A proposal requires recommendations with justification; a report requires evidence-based analysis; a review requires critical evaluation. Pass rates for the CAE are published annually by the awarding body and vary by cohort and locale. For Korean candidates preparing for CAE, the calibration of study to local context matters: TOEIC and TOEFL are the dominant English credentials. TOPIK (Korean proficiency) and CSAT (Suneung) gate domestic outcomes.
Common failure modes
These are the patterns that cause most candidates to lose marks on this topic. Recognising them in advance is half the work.
- !Writing a report in informal register (must be formal and impersonal)
- !Confusing a proposal with a report — proposals recommend future actions; reports analyse past events
- !Reviews that summarise plot instead of critically evaluating strengths and weaknesses
Study tips
- 1Learn the distinct format for each task: proposal (To/From/Re headers + recommendations + justification), report (subheadings + findings + recommendations), review (descriptive + evaluative + recommendation).
- 2Proposals use future modals: "It is recommended that...", "This would result in...", "The following measures should be adopted...".
- 3Reviews use evaluative language: "The author's treatment of X is particularly effective because...", "A notable weakness is...".
- 4한국 응시자에게 CAE 대비의 핵심은 독해 속도와 듣기 정확도입니다 — 한국식 시험 문화와 다른 출제 패턴에 익숙해지세요.
Sample CAE Writing — Formal & Informal Tasks (Part 2) questions
These sample items mirror the format and difficulty of real CAE questions. Practice with thousands more on the free Koydo question bank.
- 1
A CAE Writing Part 2 proposal should end with:
- AA summary of everything already said
- BA strong recommendation section with reasonsCorrect
- CA personal opinion about the topic
- DAn apology for any limitations
Why this answer?
A proposal's primary purpose is to recommend a course of action. The final section should be a clear, justified recommendation that synthesises the proposal's arguments into a concrete call to action. Summarising without recommending misses the genre purpose.
Frequently asked questions
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