C1 Advanced · Writing · Part 1
Discursive essays — present and support a clear point of view.
The essay is the compulsory Part 1 task at both levels, and it is the most predictable thing on the paper: you are given a question and two points to address, and you must add a third of your own. That structure is handed to you, which means an essay that loses marks on organisation has thrown away marks it did not need to lose.
Content is the criterion candidates fail most often, and nearly always the same way — covering the two given points well and treating the third as optional, or drifting into a related question that was not asked. Deal with all three points and reach a conclusion that actually follows from them. A neutral, semi-formal register throughout; the reader is a teacher, not a friend.
At C1 the essay is 220 to 260 words and it starts from input material — a set of opinions you have to summarise and evaluate rather than notes you expand. That changes the task: you select the points worth discussing, represent them accurately in your own words, and then judge between them. An answer that lifts phrasing from the input loses marks for language, and one that discusses all the points equally usually runs out of room to evaluate any of them.
Against four criteria of equal weight — content, communicative achievement, organisation and language — each scored 0 to 5. Strong language cannot rescue a missing content point, which is why re-reading the task is worth more than any phrase list.
You need a clear position by the end, yes. The essay asks you to weigh the points and conclude, so an answer that presents both sides and stops has not finished the task — the conclusion is part of the content.
