Irina Lutsenko

Pilates does seem to triple the price of any class it touches—true that. But we don't have to do pilates. We can join a club... Yulia did—and lived to tell the tale. The article was written by the wonderful Yulia Levina in my " Writing with The Guardian " course, but I can totally see it in the actual The Guardian . ✼✼✼ You do not talk about Fight Club (enough) Every Tuesday and Thursday, at 6 pm a 30-year-old woman drops whatever it is that she is doing and heads for a run-down five-floor building. There, she makes a beeline for a cramped and cluttered room that smells like dirty socks, changes into cheap-looking shorts made of polyester (the kind that makes this annoying swishing sound when you rub it) and goes straight to the boxing ring. Record scratch. Freeze frame. Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got here? Just like all the other women I’ve ever met, I was traumatized by PE lessons at school. Subjecting myself to this torture again? No, thank you. A...

This article struck a chord. Instantly. It was written by the wonderful Marina Khudolei in my " Writing with The Guardian " course, but I can totally see it in the actual The Guardian . ✼✼✼ Who’s Talking? Finding a Human Voice in the Age of ChatGPT A couple of weeks ago, I needed to write a polite email to a colleague. As a non-native speaker writing in English, I often second-guess the tone of my messages—am I being too formal? Too direct? Too vague? Wanting to get it just right, I turned to my loyal friend—ChatGPT—for help. The resulting email draft was immaculate in both tone and style, and, pleased with myself, I sent it off without a second thought. When she replied a day later, I burst out laughing—her email was so eerily similar in tone and phrasing that it was instantly obvious we shared the same virtual ghostwriter. It was clear: she, too, had asked ChatGPT for help. There we were—two humans outsourcing the simple task of polite correspondence to a machine. That wa...

I am thrilled to share an article written by my C2 Proficiency student Ekaterina Glukhova . I am thrilled not because she wrote an excellent exam answer, but because her article reads like a real article you might find in a real magazine. My philosophy is even when you write an exam answer, imagine real readers and write it for them, not just for the teacher. Ekaterina writes about her homestay experience in Brighton. Have you been to the UK? What was your accommodation like? Prompt: A magazine is running a series on unusual accommodation. You decide to write an article in which you briefly describe an unusual place you stayed at and explain why you enjoyed or didn’t enjoy staying there. You should also discuss how much the choice of accommodation to stay at can contribute to the overall impression of the trip. Why homestay?  Chalk cliffs, salty breeze, merrily jingling rides - yes, the good old Brighton, a seaside residence of George IV and mine, if only for a fortnight. And yet m...

I often hear people criticize tests like  IELTS   or   C2 Proficiency  for having nothing to do with real life. Well, I disagree. So much so that I have to split the post on this topic into two parts. Part 1. First and foremost, a universal “real life” does not exist. A farmer in Nebraska, a university professor in Oxford, and I have very different real lives. The farmer won’t write essays, the university professor won’t make Stories on Instagram, and I will do both. Second, exams were created for very specific “real lives.” If you go to official exam websites and check their descriptions, you will find the following: “IELTS is an English language test for study, migration or work. IELTS is accepted by more than 10,000 employers, universities, schools and immigration bodies around the world.” “Preparing for and passing C2 Proficiency means you have the level of English that’s needed to study or work in a very senior professional or academic environment, for example ...

Sometimes, very rarely, but sometimes when I read students' exam answers, I achieve the state "I don't have any questions or comments." I want to share an example of a C2 Proficiency Writing Task 2 answer that I like so much I don't know what to correct or comment on. The answer is written by my student, the amazing Anastasia Glebova . What is particularly worthy of admiration is that this is an answer to a very tricky prompt: "An international leisure magazine is running a series on comedy programmes shown on television around the world. It has asked readers to send in reports on comedy programmes in their countries. You decide to send in a report on a television comedy programme from your country in which you briefly describe the programme. You should also explain what it is about the characters in the programme that makes the comedy appeal to many people in your country." ( Source: Proficiency 1 ) So it's about a comedy program, yet it's not ...

One of the assessment scales for C2 Proficiency writing has one mysterious word that always makes me and every test taker smile: "Text is organized impressively..." (Organisation band 5). Impressively - how is that?   My interpretation is "impressively" means the text flows because the ideas are organized logically and are well connected. I want to share an answer that demonstrates what I am talking about. The answer below was written by Yulia Dmitrieva . Task :  Read the two texts below. Write an essay summarising and evaluating the key points from both texts. Use your own words throughout as far as possible, and include your own ideas in your answers. Answer : Hardly had the scarcity of WWII been forgotten when we became a society of consumption, one with what seems to be an insatiable appetite for products of all types and kinds. It is only inevitable that since then we also have become one that is often called a throwaway society simply because goods are disca...

Lyudmila Snezhanova is on the horns of a dilemma which test of English to take  IELTS or C2 Proficiency . Having taken both, I’ve decided to summarize some practical information about the exams, hopefully making her choice easier (and your choice if you are facing the same dilemma). In this post, I will outline the exam structures briefly and comment on what seemed easy or difficult to me personally. I will be talking about IELTS Academic only. I will be using the old abbreviation CPE for C2 Proficiency because it's shorter and more familiar to most people in the EFL world. The post is a long read, but I've organized it into sections so it should be easy to navigate.  First, some words about my exam history. I've taken paper-based IELTS Academic (three times, getting 8.5 in 2011 and 2013, before finally getting 9 in 2016) and paper-based C2 Proficiency (just once, getting an A in 2018). Now off to describing the two exams. 1 Listening IELTS You...

I keep writing like crazy because I am preparing for the C2 Proficiency test (fka CPE). In my previous post, I shared my Writing Part 2 article . In this post, I want to share a review I wrote about a movie I haven't seen and give some insights into handling an unfortunate task. Task A film magazine has invited readers to submit reviews of films which are set in the future, but deal with themes relevant to today’s world, such as our relationship with technology or environmental problems. You decide to submit a review briefly describing such a film and explaining why its themes are relevant today. You should also consider how important it is for films set in the future to say something about contemporary society.   ( Cambridge English Proficiency 2 , Test 2, Question 4). This is a really unfortunate task for me because I watch very few movies, maybe 3 a year. But as I read it, I imagined myself sitting in the exam room not wanting to fail, so I had to come up with somethin...