10 Common FCE Writing Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

1. Not answering the question fully

The essay asks for two given ideas plus one of your own; the report asks how the library is used and what could improve. Leave any required point out and the Content scale drops before your English is even judged. The habit: underline every task requirement before writing, and tick each one off in your plan.

2. Writing without a plan

Unplanned answers start confidently, stall at minute twenty, and end wherever the word count catches them. Five minutes of notes — opinion, point per paragraph, the third idea — turns the rest of the time into assembly instead of improvisation. The full template is in the essay guide.

3. The wrong register for the task

The most expensive mistake on this list, because it looks like fluent English while quietly capping Communicative Achievement: a chatty essay, or a stiff, formal article that reads like a legal notice. Each task type has a voice — the essay formal, the article personal, the report impersonal — and switching between them is a trained skill. The habit: before writing, name your imagined reader out loud.

4. Ignoring the word count

140–190 words is not a suggestion. Far under usually means underdeveloped Content; far over means no time to check, and errors the examiner must count. The habit: learn what ~170 words of your handwriting or typing looks like, in practice, so you stop counting on exam day.

5. No linking words — or one giant paragraph

Organisation is a quarter of your mark, and it is scored on visible things: paragraphs, sequencing, connectors. A wall of text with three “and”s caps it. The habit: six linkers you can use accurately (the table is in the essay guide) and one idea per paragraph.

6. A report without headings

Headings are what make a report a report; without them it is an essay wearing a costume, and the examiner marks it accordingly. The habit: memorise the four-section skeleton — Introduction, two topic sections, Recommendations — from the report guide.

7. Copying language straight from the prompt

Words lifted from the task earn zero Language credit — the examiner cannot tell whether you could have produced them yourself. The habit: paraphrase from the very first sentence. If the task says “free sports facilities”, you write “sport that costs nothing” — instantly your vocabulary, not theirs.

8. A weak or missing conclusion

“Do you agree?” wants an answer, and the conclusion is where examiners look for it. Essays that argue beautifully and never land, or simply stop when the words run out, leave Content marks on the table. The habit: write the conclusion’s one-sentence opinion into your plan before you start.

9. No time left to check

Third-person “s”, articles, spelling of words you know perfectly well — the errors of writing fast, not of not knowing. Three checking minutes routinely catch five of them. The habit: when practising, always stop writing three minutes early. If checking is part of how you practise, it happens on exam day by itself. (If the same grammar slip keeps surviving your checks, the grammar topics guide covers the structures B2 actually tests.)

10. Choosing the wrong Part 2 task

Picking the review because it looks fun, then discovering you have nothing to say about it, is a decision made in ten seconds that costs twenty minutes. The habit: decide your strongest two task types in advance — formal organiser? report. Personal voice? article — and only deviate on exam day if a task is a gift.

Don’t just read about these — find out which ones you make

Every writer has two or three of these as personal habits, and by definition you cannot see your own. This is exactly what Felix, the AI examiner, is built to catch: it marks your writing on the four Cambridge scales, quotes the register slips and missing points in your own sentences, and repeats the diagnosis across attempts so the pattern becomes visible. The B2 writing tasks and the marking both come with the Exam Prep pass — €12 for three months, nothing renews.

For the full picture of the exam — every paper, the scoring, the timeline — start from the complete B2 First preparation guide.