CAE Writing Assessment Criteria

Your Writing score depends on four different aspects:

• Content. How well you is your writing at achieving the task. Have you developed all the
points required by the task?
• Communicative Achievement. How appropriate is your writing in terms of style? Have
you used the right register (formal or informal)? Does your writing fill the style
requirements of your text type (report, review, essay, letter)? Do you understand the
purpose of the text you’re writing?
• Organisation. How logically you structure your text (introduction, body paragraphs,
conclusion). How well you connect your ideas in the text (cohesion).
• Language. Your grammar and vocabulary. How diverse is your choice of grammar
structure? Is the vocabulary you use fairly varied? Do you make any mistakes in both
and how much do they affect understanding the idea you convey?

For each of the above criteria (content, communicative achievement,

organisation and language), note down where, specifically, the sample essay
below ranks highly and where it falls short.

CAE Writing Part 1 : Sample Essay

Scholarships

Tuition fees have never been low — on the contrary, only the chosen few can comfortably
afford paying their studying costs. To participate in a scholarship programme has always
been every student’s aspiration. Not only does the scholarship save a lot of money, it also
looks good on ones CV. In the paragraphs below I will explain my opinion on why
members of poor families and foreign students or students with outstanding marks should
be getting preferences for scholarship programme participation.

Provision of scholarship grants is not an easy task. The decision-making system should be
fair and impartial, ensuring that only the most worthy and needy have their academic
expenses taken care of by the goverment. It is only then we can insure that the
programme serves its initial purpose.

Young people from families with insufficient means are generally unable to to pay for their
education. Conversely, children of financially-sound households are more likely to get into
scholarship, as they usually have much better secondary education — not to mention their
parents being way able to cover tuition fees. These facts eventually lead to further
widening of the wealth gap between the rich and the poor, entailing a number of social and
economic issues. Such oppertunity unequality could be mitigated by lowering the
scholarship requirements for the less wealthy.

Would-be students who are way smart should not be dissed and stopped from going to
varsities because they don’t have the dough for it. Considering their mental aptitude and
zeal, these young people are very likely to become highly-qualified professionals,
potentially making an appreciable contribution to society. Therefore they ought to be
illegible for scholarship participation even if they do not meet, other non-academic
requirements.