Two tasks in ninety minutes, under exam conditions: no model, no plan, and a clock that starts when you type your first word. Write both answers, then hand in. The criteria and the models appear at that point, and the support opens for the debrief — and for the second draft, which is where the marks are.
This is the exam-conditions mock: nothing is checked until you hand in. The clock starts when you answer your first question. After you hand in, every part is marked at once and the support opens for the debrief.
You must answer this question. Read the two texts and write an essay of 240–280 words. Summarise and evaluate the key points from both texts, in your own words as far as possible. Write in an academic register, for a tutor.
Text 1 — from an article by a palliative-care nurse
A patient who is told he is not responding as we had hoped has been told he is dying, and he knows it. What the softened phrase gives him is not ignorance but time — the half-hour, or the night, in which to arrive at the fact at his own pace rather than at the doctor’s. Plain speaking in that room is often a kindness to the speaker, who wants the hard sentence behind them. The gentle phrase is a kindness to the person who has to live inside it. Language on a ward is not information; it is pacing, and the people who insist on the bare word have usually never had to say it twice.
Text 2 — from an essay by a philosopher
Every euphemism transfers a decision from the listener to the speaker. The patient who is not responding has been handed a sentence he must decode, and the choice of whether to decode it now, later, or never has been made for him by somebody who preferred not to say the word. That is not tact. It is control, exercised by the person who is not dying over the person who is, and it is defended in the name of the patient because it cannot be defended in the name of the truth. The right to be told plainly does not depend on whether the teller finds it comfortable.
Your answer 0 words
Mark your own against the real criteria:
Both texts accept that softened medical language conceals nothing from the patient; they differ over whose interest the softening serves.
The nurse argues that the euphemism is pacing rather than information: the patient hears the meaning at once, and the gentler phrase grants him time to reach it at his own speed. She adds that the plain word often relieves the speaker more than the listener, and that those who demand it have rarely had to use it repeatedly. The philosopher reverses the account. A euphemism, he argues, moves a decision — when, or whether, to confront the fact — from the listener to the speaker, and does so for the speaker's comfort; presented as tact, it is control exercised by the well over the ill, and the right to plain speech cannot depend on the teller's ease.
The philosopher's central move is, I think, correct: a phrase that must be decoded does make the listener do work he did not ask for. But the argument proves less than it claims. It assumes that a decision taken by the speaker is always taken against the patient, whereas the nurse's whole point is that it can be taken for him — and that the patient decodes the phrase the moment he chooses. A ward is not a courtroom.
Where the nurse is vulnerable is on habit. Pacing offered once is a kindness; pacing offered by default becomes a wall, and the philosopher is right that walls are rarely built by the people inside them.
The workable rule follows: soften the sentence, never the fact — and let the patient, not the ward, decide when to hear it plainly.
The plan.
Every content point must appear.
An opening you can borrow. “Both texts accept that softened medical language conceals nothing from the patient; they differ over whose interest the softening serves.” — the shared ground and the split, in one sentence. Borrow the shape: Both texts accept that X; they differ over Y.
Write an answer to one of the questions below in 280–320 words. Put the number of the question you have chosen at the top of your answer.
2 (a) · The article. A language magazine is running a series called Rules I break, in which writers describe one rule of English usage they break on purpose. Write an article about a rule you break: what the rule is and where you learned it, why you break it, and what breaking it lets you do that obeying it would not. Readership: educated, international, interested in language but not specialists. An article may be personal and may use humour; it must not be a list.
2 (b) · The report. The director of a company has received a growing number of complaints about the tone of its letters and emails to customers — some described as cold, others as insincerely warm. You have been asked to write a report. Describe the problem, recommend two or three specific changes, and say what each would cost or how difficult it would be. Use headings. A report is impersonal, and every recommendation must be actionable.
2 (c) · The letter. A newspaper columnist has claimed that the British are incapable of sincerity: that every feeling is delivered inside a joke, and that visitors should not believe anything a British person says about how they feel. Write a letter to the newspaper responding to the column. Say how far you agree, give your reasons, and support them from your own experience. A letter to a newspaper is formal, addresses the argument rather than the writer, and must make a case.
Your answer 0 words
Mark your own against the real criteria:
A model answer to Question 2(b), the report. 306 words.
Purpose
This report was requested following a rise in complaints about the tone, rather
than the content, of the company's letters and emails. It describes the problem, proposes three
changes and estimates their cost.
Current situation
A sample of two hundred outgoing messages was reviewed. Two faults
recur. Template letters, particularly those refusing a request, read as cold: the decision arrives
in the first line, unsoftened, and the closing formula ("We trust this is satisfactory") is heard
as sarcasm. Newer emails have the opposite fault: an opening paragraph of warmth ("We're so glad
you reached out!") that customers, especially older ones, read as insincere because it precedes
bad news. In both cases the customer reports feeling handled rather than addressed.
Recommendations
1. Retire the current refusal template. Replace it with a three-part
form: what was asked, what can be done, what cannot and why. The refusal should follow the
alternative, not precede it.
2. Remove scripted warmth from openings. Staff should open with the
customer's question, in the customer's words, and save any expression of regret for the point at
which the regret is real.
3. Introduce a read-aloud check. Before sending, any message refusing
something is read aloud by a colleague; if it could not be said to a face without discomfort, it
is rewritten.
Implications
Recommendations 1 and 2 require a half-day rewrite of templates and a
one-hour briefing for customer-facing staff; the cost is negligible. Recommendation 3 adds
perhaps two minutes per refusal and will meet some resistance. It is recommended nonetheless,
since it is the only measure that addresses tone directly rather than by proxy.
Conclusion
The complaints are not about decisions but about the manner of their
delivery. The measures above are cheap, and the third of them is the one most likely to work.
The plan.
Every content point must appear.
An opening you can borrow. For the report: “This report was requested following a rise in complaints about the tone, rather than the content, of the company’s letters and emails.” — the purpose in one sentence, with the distinction the whole report rests on already made. For the letter: “Your columnist’s claim — that nothing a British person says about their feelings can be believed — is half right, and the wrong half is the one he builds on.” For the article: open with the rule being spoken aloud by the teacher who gave it to you.
Writing marks itself here against the four real Cambridge scales. After hand-in, tick the criteria honestly against the draft you actually wrote in the time — not the draft you would have written with another ten minutes.
The question this mock answers is not “can I write at C2?” but “can I write at C2 in forty-five minutes, twice, with no plan in front of me?”. If the answer was no on Part 1 and yes on Part 2, the problem is the summary — it took too long — and the fix is compression practice, not more essays.