A glimpse of my "C2 Proficiency Writing" class 🌼🌼🌼

Every time I give my CPE writing students a new writing prompt, I also challenge them to using a new technique.

Today we looked at this sentence from a book review on The Guardian: "Perry can undoubtedly be a pain in the backside but in “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing” he wears his big, bruised heart on his sleeve."

The sentence contains two sides of the same technique: modifying an idiom or a set expression. The real expressions are "a pain in the a**" and "wear your heart on your sleeve."

This is what my students will be trying to implement in their next review. But why? Is it even a useful technique for CPE? If you look at the assessment criteria carefully, you will see this phrasing, "Uses a wide range of vocabulary, including less common lexis, with fluency, precision, sophistication and style." If you think about it, CPE writing is not actually about using sophisticated vocabulary. It's about using vocabulary with sophistication and style. And this is exactly what the technique above will help you do.

Here is the link to the review we used:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/nov/16/friends-lovers-and-the-big-terrible-thing-by-matthew-perry-review-being-chandler-bing