Your four options, and the one that is missing
Part 2 gives you three tasks and you choose one. Across papers the pool is letter/email, report, proposal and review. If you came from B2 First expecting to fall back on the article you wrote so many of, it is not there — the article is a B2 Part 2 option and does not appear at C1.
The proposal is the other change, and it is a genuinely new task type with no B2 equivalent at all. It has its own guide: how to write a C1 Advanced proposal. This post covers the other three.
Report
Written for someone who asked for it — a manager, a college principal, a committee — and who will act on what it says. Fully formal, organised under plain noun headings, and impersonal: a report presents findings rather than feelings.
Structure is a short statement of purpose, two or three sections of findings, and conclusions or recommendations drawn from them. At C1 the brief is usually more demanding than at B2 — you are typically reporting on something with competing considerations, and the conclusions have to acknowledge the trade-off rather than pretend it away.
A report that reads as though one option was obviously right from the first line has not done the evaluative work the task is asking for. The language that carries this: while X offers clear advantages, it does so at the cost of…, on balance, the evidence favours…, this is not without drawbacks, chief among them…
Review
A review describes something and then judges it, and at C1 the judgement has to be considered rather than enthusiastic. A flat verdict — it was excellent, I recommend it — is a B2-level answer. What C1 wants is an assessment: what was the thing trying to do, how far did it succeed, and who will it and will it not suit.
Register is the trickiest of the three, because it depends on the publication named in the task. A review for a college magazine sits lower than one for a professional journal. Neither is casual — but the register you pick must then hold for all 260 words, and this is the task where drift is most common because evaluative writing tempts people into conversational asides.
Keep description subordinate to judgement. A plot summary or a feature list that fills half the answer is the commonest way to run out of room for the opinion, which is the part being marked.
Formal letter or email
Everything follows from one question: who is reading it, and what do you want from them. At C1 the reader is more often institutional than personal, and the purposes are more demanding than at B2 — complaining effectively, declining without causing offence, pressing a case to someone who can refuse it.
That makes register the substance of the task rather than its packaging. The difference between a firm complaint and a rude one is exactly what Communicative Achievement is measuring here, and it is carried by hedging and impersonal construction: I was somewhat disappointed to find that… rather than I was angry that you…; it would appear that an error has been made rather than you made a mistake.
You are marked on the body of the text, so addresses, dates and layout furniture are not needed. Spend those words on the content points instead.
The three skeletons
Structure is the part that transfers from B2 unchanged, so this is deliberately brief — what changes at C1 is how much has to fit in each section, not where the sections go.
Report — roughly 220–260 words across four blocks
- Purpose (25 words): what the report covers and who asked for it.
- Finding 1 (70): the situation in one area, with a specific detail rather than a generality.
- Finding 2 (70): a second area, including whatever cuts against the first.
- Conclusions (60): what follows from the findings — and it must actually follow, not appear from nowhere.
Review — three blocks, weighted towards judgement
- Opening (40): what the thing is and the angle you are taking on it. Not a summary.
- Assessment (140): what worked, what did not, and why — the bulk of the piece, and where the evaluative language lives.
- Verdict (60): the recommendation, and specifically who it suits. “Worth seeing if you already like X; less so if…” reads as judgement in a way “highly recommended” does not.
Letter or email — four blocks
- Reason for writing (30): stated in the first sentence, without preamble.
- Background (60): only what the reader needs to act.
- The substance (110): the complaint, request or response, with each required content point covered.
- Close (40): what you want to happen next, and by when if the task implies a deadline.
What all three share at C1
| Requirement | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| 220–260 words | Roughly 60 words more than B2 asks for, which is a whole extra developed point — not padding on the ones you had |
| Register consistency | One level, held from first word to last. Drift is assessed under Communicative Achievement and is easier to commit over a longer piece |
| Evaluation over description | Every task type ends in a judgement: conclusions, a verdict, a request. Describing the situation is setup, not the answer |
| Cohesion across paragraphs | At C1 the Organisation descriptor expects connection between paragraphs, not just within them — referencing back, signposting forward |
| All content points covered | Part 2 prompts bury two or three requirements in a few lines. Content is the criterion candidates lose most on |
- under 220 · ideas left undeveloped — the Content scale drops first
- 220–260 · the band Cambridge sets for the task
- over 260 · time you needed for checking, spent on words that earn nothing extra
Choosing between them under pressure
You have three tasks and a few minutes to decide. The useful question is not which topic you like but which reader you can hold steadily for 260 words.
| Report | Review | Letter / email | Proposal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Direction | Backward — what is | Backward — how good it was | Either — what you want | Forward — what should be |
| Register | Formal, impersonal | Semi-formal to formal, reader-dependent | Formal, personal address | Formal, impersonal |
| Headings | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Ends with | Conclusions | A verdict and who it suits | A clear request or response | Recommendations and their benefits |
A quick way to decide
- Confident with headings and impersonal register? Report or proposal are the most structurally forgiving.
- Strong on evaluative vocabulary and comfortable committing to an opinion? Review.
- Good at controlling tone — polite but firm? Letter or email, which is the one where register does the most work.
Practising them
Part 2 improves on marked practice rather than volume, because the criterion that costs candidates most is content — and you cannot see your own missing content point. Write one of each task type, get each marked, and you will usually find the same criterion coming back weakest across all of them. That is the one to work on.
Each task type has its own set here: report, review and formal email or letter, each marked against the four Cambridge criteria with sentence-level comments. The C1 Advanced essay guide covers the compulsory Part 1, and the C1 Advanced exam preparation guide sets the Writing paper against the other three.