The study journal
Ideas to explore. Skills to practise. Find something useful for your next study session.
50 B2 Essay Themes Plus Paper Format, Timing and Marking Explained
Problem: unfamiliar essay themes cause blank-page panic — and writers who never learned the paper’s format mismanage time and misjudge marking. Answer in…
Review Your Own B2 Writing: Checklists, Practice Papers, Response Review
Problem: practice without review rehearses faults — writers complete papers, glance at models, and repeat everything next time. Answer in brief: review…
B2 Essay Language Plus 6 Model Pairs: Band 5 vs Band 3
Problem: language study floats free of tasks — writers stock phrases they never deploy, and model pairs get admired, not mined. Answer in brief: stock…
The 5-Paragraph Engine: From Set Essays to Letters and Emails
Problem: essay skills stay trapped in Part 1 — Part 2 letters ramble because writers start over structurally. Answer in brief: the 5-paragraph engine…
The Band 5 Essay Skeleton: Pitfalls from Commentaries, Paragraph Discipline
Problem: writers know Band 5 traits abstractly — “develop ideas, use range” — but cannot convert traits into paragraph behaviour. Answer in brief: the Band…
Exact B2 Task Requirements Plus Toolbox and Annotated Models
Problem: writers answer the question they wish they had — missing notes, wrong reader, own idea absent — because requirements were never studied exactly….
B2 Essay Sets 9-11: How Supervised Essay Practice Works
Problem: essay sets get “done” — written, glanced at, forgotten — with nothing transferring to the next set. Answer in brief: supervised set practice means…
The Compulsory B2 Essay: Band 5 Architecture That Never Fails
Problem: the compulsory essay decides half the Writing paper, yet writers treat it like an opinion paragraph with extra words. Answer in brief: the essay…
B2 First Essay Drills and Models: Paragraph Rules That Hold
Problem: essay advice stays theoretical — writers nod at skeletons, then freeze on blank pages. Answer in brief: drills convert knowledge to reflex (timed…
Inference and Distractors: Global, Paragraph-Level and Archetype Defence
Problem: inference questions feel like guessing, and distractors are designed to feel right — vocabulary matches, logic does not. Answer in brief: separate…