Useful phrases for CPE/ CAE/ FCE and IELTS essays

Essays are academic documents written for a university/college class on a serious topic, such as "global warming" or "the impact of new technologies on our society". Therefore they are formal in style, contain advanced/specialised vocabulary and use a wide variety of grammatical structures.


Writing an essay for an international exam like CPE, CAE, FCE or IELTS, is usually perceived by students as a real challenge. But it shouldn´t be such a daunting task, having had the right amount of practice and counting with a couple of useful expressions up your sleeve. This post intends to provide you with some help.

Guide to write an essay: Click here!
What´s the difference between an essay and an article?
Click here!


Useful phrases for writing essays:

The following is a list of phrases that can be used when writing an essay. Notice that they have a formal style and that they do not contain contractions.

Establishing the purpose of the essay (introduction)
This essay critically examines...
The paper will review the research conducted on...
The aim of this paper is to examine...
The essay seeks to...

Giving opinions/stating facts
It is vitally important to...
I would like to point out that...
It is doubtful that...
Without a doubt...
It would be infinitely preferable to...

Giving somebody else´s opinion
It has recently been suggested that...
According to Dr...

Giving examples
In the case of...
This is an example of...
For instance...

Presenting arguments in order
Firstly...
Secondly...
In addition to what has already been mentioned...

Summarising your opinion
In the end,...
All in all,...
In conclusion,...


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CPE Article: A fun way to learn English

Need help on how to write an article? Take a look at this  CPE sample article by our guest blogger from Spain, Elena Traviesa.













Task: " You are a student at an international college. Your tutor has asked you to write an article for the college website on ways students can improve language skills outside the classroom. In your article, you should suggest ways in which students can make contact with English-language speakers. You should also assess whether the most effective way of improving language skills is to make friends with speakers of the language"

               A fun way to learn English (give your article a title)

(State your main idea in the first paragraph)
In today's intercultural society, no one can deny the importance of learning a second language, especially English. In our college we believe that major action should be taken to guarantee that all of us, the students, are given the chance to practice this ability to communicate with for people from all over the world. This task will require working with a holistic approach and will imply the participation of a very committed group of people willing to help each other. So are you ready? (use a question to motivate readers)

(organise your text into paragraphs)

Our first idea is to use the Internet. For young people surfing the net is as easy as pie and we all have access to it. We suggest getting in touch with other students from around the world. Some highly recommendable sites include a wide range of social networks as Facebook and Twitter. It is also a good idea to encourage students to chat via Skype with people from English speaking countries.

A second idea is to organise reading or conversation clubs, which can have monthly gatherings in different spots in the city. Needless to say this will be a very effective way to learn while making friends and having a blast. There are several attractive places in town such as parks, art galleries, cafés, and social artistic venues where students and professionals can give a boost to their social and language skills.

A final idea is for the college to create a web page. With the support of this effective tool, our students can have blogs with a variety of engaging tasks and games. We can have fun getting familiar with collocations and structures that can be shared as part of an exercise on our creative website. It will definitely be highly engaging for students regardless of their backgrounds and specializations, they will find an enjoyable site where they can put language into practice, as they will be well-connected and comfortable with the cuttingedge technology.

By Elena Traviesa
Sociologist/English teacher/blogger from Bilbao, Spain.

#words: 325


Need more help? Try these links:

How to write an article 

Article sample 1  

Article sample 2