B1 WRITING TYPES

EMAIL OR LETTER
- El nivel de formalidad lo marcará a quién está dirigido el email o la letter. Si es a un
amigo, se puede bajar el registro y añadir elementos como phrasal verbs, expresiones
coloquiales, etc.
- La presentación del email es muy clara: Esto se consigue utilizando fórmulas y párrafos
de apertura y cierre, una firma, y dejando un espacio claro entre los diferentes
párrafos.
- Cada párrafo tiene un objetivo claro.
- La estructura general quedaría así:

Saludo: Hi Sandy,
Párrafo introductorio (Me too): Thanks a lot for writing back.
Idea 1 (Say which I prefer…): On my first evening,…
Idea 2 (No because…): As for climbing,…
Idea 3 (Ask Sandy…): How about visiting…?
Párrafo de despedida: Well, I have to go now…
Despedida: Take care,
Firma: Luis

- Lo bueno de escribir un email para el B1 es que todos los emails pueden/deben llevar
la misma estructura. De este modo, hay ciertas partes y ciertas fórmulas que ya
puedes llevar preparadas de casa.
- Los párrafos de apertura y cierre se utilizan para decir «hola» y «adiós» de manera
educada.
- El párrafo introductorio se usa normalmente para reaccionar a noticias (It’s great to
hear from you… / I’m so excited about...) y para introducir el tema del email.
- El cuerpo principal se encarga de responder a cada una de las sub-tareas (ideas), que
en este caso son: qué visitar, qué ropa llevar e invitar a nuestro amigo.
- El párrafo de cierre se usa para comenzar a despedirnos y para pedir una respuesta a
nuestro correo.
- Si el registro es informal se pueden añadir:
 Contracciones: It’s great, I’m, you’ll have, etc.
 Phrasal verbs: put you up, check out.
 Expresiones coloquiales: How are you doing?, you should totally, you can’t miss,
drop me a line, etc.
 Escribir como pensamos: Oh, By the way, Anyway,
 Puntuación flexible: …viewpoint – you’ll have the best…
 Idioms…

- Familiarízate con las expresiones propias de los emails:

 Para comenzar el email: Hi, … / Hello there,

 Para terminar: Love, / See you soon, / Take care, / Bye for now,
 Cómo responder a un email: Lovely to hear from you / It’s great to hear from
you /It’s been ages since we last wrote to each other
  Cómo felicitar: That’s fantastic news! Well done! I’m very happy for you! Glad
to hear that you are now…
 Cómo realizar sugerencias: Why don’t we/you…? Would you like to…? / If I
were you, I would…
 Cómo hacer una petición: Could you…/ Would you mind +vb_ing…?
 Cómo dar buenas/malas noticias: You’ll be pleased to hear that…/ I’m afraid …
- No olvides usar conectores:
 Conectores de utilidad: And / but / so / because / although / also / as well as…
 Frases para expresar opinion: As far as I’m concerned… / It seems to me
that… /In my view, …. / I’d say that…

STORY
- La estructura general de una historia quedaría así:
 Título: El título debe resumir la historia completa (¡sin spoilers!) o, al menos,
estar relacionado con la temática principal.
 Presentación: Este es el comienzo de la historia, donde se presentan los
personajes y el lugar de la acción. Es, básicamente, la introducción a la
siguiente parte, el nudo, y al argumento de la historia.
 Nudo: En esta parte los personajes se las ven con la acción principal y buscan
maneras para resolver el argumento.
 Desenlace: Aquí es donde la acción se resuelve y la historia concluye con un
final, normalmente sin cabos sueltos.
- Recomiendo que escribáis el título de la historia en mayúsculas (si las instrucciones
piden título) y dejéis espacio entre los párrafos, ya que la estructura y organización
tienen que ser muy claras.
- Lo fundamental en las historias son las expresiones de tiempo. Es más que importante
aprendérselas y saber usarlas para poder darle conexión a nuestra historia.
 It all began… (Todo empezó…)
 When I first… (La primera vez que yo…)
 At the beginning… (Al principio…)
 It was a hot summer/cold winter day. (Era un cálido/frío día de
verano/invierno.)
- Es importante prestar mucha atención a la línea temporal en la que se desarrolla la
historia. Y para definir el orden de los eventos de la historia debemos usar expresiones
o frases de tiempo que nos ayudan a ordenar los hechos:
 Then (Entonces)
 After that (Después de eso)
 Not long aftewards (Poco después)
 As soon as (En cuanto)
 While (Mientras)
 Meanwhile (Mientras tanto)
 As (Mientras)
 Some time later (Algo después)
 A little later (Poco después)
 ____ minutes later (___ minutos más tarde)
 a moment later (un momento más tarde)
  Later (that morning/afternoon/day/night…) (Más tarde esa misma
mañana/ese mismo día, etc.)
 Just then (Justo entonces)
- También hay expresiones para crear suspense:
 Suddenly (De repente)
 All of a sudden (De repente)
 Without warning (Sin previo aviso)
 Just at that moment (Justo en ese momento)
 Unexpectedly (Inesperadamente)
 Out of nowhere (Por sorpresa)
- Para concluir la historia temenos estas expresiones:
 In the end (Al final)
 Finally (Al final)
 When it was all over (Cuando todo había acabado)
 Eventually (Finalmente)
 After everything that happened (Después de todo lo que había pasado)
 Luckily (Afortunadamente)
- Otro aspecto a tener en cuenta es que las stories se escriben en pasado, por lo que es
necesario utilizar una variedad de tiempos verbales pasados apropiadamente. Los tres
tiempos verbales pasados principales que debes dominar son los siguientes:
 Pasado simple (-ed/irregular form)
 Pasado continuo
 Pasado perfecto
- Tanto si te quedas atascado/a como si no, haz una lluvia de ideas antes de escribir. En
el writing hay que organizarlo todo muy bien, por lo que tómate unos minutos para
pensar cómo vas a escribirlo antes de hacerlo. También puedes hacer un
brainstorming o lluvia de ideas o vocabulario si tienes algún problema.

ARTICLE
- Lo primero a tener en cuenta es quién escribe el artículo, cuál es el tema principal y
cuáles son las ideas de cada párrafo.
- Cada párrafo tiene un objetivo claro, tiene que estar bien estructurado y las ideas se
tienen que ver rápidamente:
 La introducción presenta el tema de una manera general, pero dejando claro
de qué va a tratar el resto del artículo.
 En el segundo párrafo hablo de por qué me gusta o no algo, de una de las
cosas que me parecen fantásticas.
 En el tercer párrafo respondo a una pregunta, a una recomendación, hago una
recomendación, etc.
 El párrafo de cierre se usa para hacer una especie de resumen, hacer alguna
pregunta o una conclusión.
- Puedes usar registro informal pero siempre manteniendo la claridad en lo que
escribes. Puedes usar:
 Phrasal verbs: put you up, check out.
 Contracciones: Isn’t that fantastic?
 Expresiones coloquiales: one of the cool things, I totally recommend it, etc.
 Dirigirnos al lector directamente: What about you?
  Exclamaciones: …find the answer!
 Idioms…

B1 READING TIPS
Un consejo general antes de empezar a analizar cada parte es que siempre tengáis presente
que hay trampas. Mediante el uso de negativos, sinónimos, palabras parecidas, decir algo y
luego negarlo… En el Reading van a intentar confundiros o esconderos las respuestas
correctas. Así que tenedlo presente y revisar muy bien las opciones antes de contestar.

Consejo dos: puesto que tenéis límite de tiempo y hay algunas partes más largas que otras,
podéis cambiar el orden en el que hacéis cada parte. Si lo preferís, haced la de textos más
largos al principio y luego vais a las más rápidas. Siempre revisad que las habéis hecho todas.

PART 1
Very often you will find that some of the possible answers are almost correct, but a little twist
with the grammar or just one word that makes the whole sentence negative can turn a correct
answer into an incorrect one.

When you read the texts and the possible answers, make sure that you underline the most
important words. Then analyse what you have underlined and, finally, choose the correct
answer either by eliminating the wrong options or by finding the correct one.

You might find in this part:

- Signs – warnings and requests

- Messages – requesting, apologising, ordering
- Postcards – describing a situation, informing
- Notes – offering information, asking for information
- Emails – apologising, persuading, suggesting, recommending
- Labels – warning, giving advice.

PART 2
Keep in mind that there are a total of five people and eight short texts so, all together, it is
quite a lot to read for you. You need to be very careful and pay close attention to your timing.
If you spend too much time on one task, that time will be missing for the other ones.

The wrong answers are very similar to the correct one or you can find information connected
to all the different possible answers in the same text. We call these pieces of wrong or
confusing information ‘distractors’. In part 2 you will find many traps.

Read and analyse what the people want. You will often find that the words in the descriptions
of the people are different from the words in the descriptions of the other page. Underline the
key words and what these people want. That is highly important to find the text that matches.
As you match the texts, draw an X next to the ones you already used, that way you will see less
answers and I will be easier.

PART 3
In PET Reading you only get 45 minutes to complete 6 different tasks. Some of these tasks, like
Part 3, ask you to read pretty long texts and answer questions or fill in gaps. In addition, you
always have to transfer your answers onto an extra answer sheet, which usually takes around
five minutes. Keep an eye on the clock.

You will also find distractors in this part, so be careful.

In Reading Part 3 this process looks like this:

- Read questions 11-14 and underline the key words

- Quickly read the text and highlight the parts where you can find the answers to
questions 11-14
- Re-read the highlighted parts and choose the correct answer.
- Read question 15 and the possible answers carefully and underline key words.
- Choose the correct answer for question 15.

Question 15, however, asks you about the whole text. You can’t just look for some detail that
gives you the correct answer, but you need to understand the main idea(s) and what the
author wants to say. A good way to answer this task is to eliminate the wrong options. They
always include something that the text doesn’t talk about or they give you false information so
it is normally quite easy to find the wrong ones.

PART 4
In Reading Part 4, our process could look like this:

- Read the text quickly and summarise each paragraph.

- Analyse the sentences.
- Analyse the text and choose the correct sentence for each gap.

To make a connection between the text and the sentences you have to find words or
expressions in those sentences that are not fully clear. For example, if there is a “it” in the
answers, you will need to find the context to know what “it” refers to. This is a way to help you
know what you are looking for. Be sure to underline the key words or the things that will help
you find the answer.

PART 5
Read the text quickly. The first step is not a must, but I definitely recommend reading the text
quickly to get a general understanding. Students often forget about the whole text and focus
too much on individual gaps.

Analyse the gaps. Possibly the most important step of the whole process. After you have read
the text quickly it is now time to look at the gaps. Remember that Part 5 mainly tests your
vocabulary so you need to find out what possible expressions we can create with the words
that are in front of and after the gaps.

It is always a good idea to eliminate one or two options that just don’t work. Some of them
won’t be logic or according to our grammar skills, can’t fit in the gap. Feel free to eliminate
those and choose between the other two.

Once you finish with all the gaps, it is always a good idea to read the text one more time. We
often focus too much on the details around each gap that we sometimes forget about the
meaning of the whole text. Reading everything one last time can help you find mistakes that
looked correct when you were concentrating on the gap, but in the full context of the topic
you might realize that you need to choose a different option.

You need to know combinations of verbs and prepositions very well, but also other
combinations of verbs and adjectives or nouns which are called collocations. Conclusion,
practice as much as possible, read texts and use the materials provided to improve.

PART 6
If you feel like you don’t know some of the answers, don’t worry. Just guess the answer and
move on to the next one. Don’t get frustrated, you can come back later to the question whose
answer you don’t know.

In Part 6, a step-by-step plan might look like this:

- Read the text quickly

- Analyse the gaps
- Fill in the gaps
- Read the text again

The next step should always be to look at the gaps and the information you can find before
and after each gap. This will give you useful clues so you are able to decide what word is
missing in each space. Focus on the grammatical structures, for example articles, verb forms,
nouns and prepositions. They often tell you what type of word you need to add to make the
sentence grammatically correct and meaningful.

Common answers in this part are related to:

- Articles: a, an, the

- Determiners: so, such, not, no, this, that, these, those, if, unless, all, every, each
- Auxiliaries: should, may, can, could, might, will, would, is, are, was, were, do, does, did,
has, have, had, must, ought to
- Prepositions: on, at, in, out, up, down, for, with, into, around, about, like, through,
over, under, before, after, to, of, above, in front of, opposite
- Adverbs: always, often, sometimes, never, able, since, yet, still, already, just, for, ever,
- Relative pronouns: which, who, that, whose, when, where, why, why, how
- Quantifiers: much, many, (a) little, (a) few, a lot (of), some, any, no, plenty (of), none,
both, all, either, neither, each, every, (the) other(s), another, little, any
- Comparatives: as, than, more, less, fewer, like
- Connectors: however, but, whereas, although, even though, though, while, and, in
addition, also, too, for example, like, such as, because, as, since, because of, due to, In
conclusion, to summarize, in summary, so, therefore, thus, hence, nevertheless,
moreover, when, firstly, secondly, thirdly, finally, lastly