B2 Writing

Two hundred and fifty words, forty-five minutes, one position to take and defend. That is less time than it sounds and more words than it sounds, and the candidates who run out of both are almost never the ones with the weaker French — they are the ones who started writing before they knew what their second argument was. At B2 the écrit is not a test of expression. It is a test of structure produced under time.

So this track builds from parts you can assemble rather than inspiration you have to summon. A thesis paragraph that announces a position and commits to it. An argument block with a fixed internal shape — claim, development, example — so that each one is a known quantity to write. The connector families that hold those blocks together, worked explicitly by function: cause, concession, consequence, opposition. And the concessive move, certes… mais, which is the single clearest marker separating a B1 list of opinions from a B2 argument that has considered the other side. The lettre formelle is treated frankly as a machine of fixed formulas, because that is what it is, and knowing the formulas buys back minutes for the content.

Then the parts that raise the register: the subjunctive where argumentation requires it, nominalisation to condense, paraphrase to escape repetition, reported speech, nous against on, and the punctuation and typography of formal French that a reader notices without being able to say why. From there it is repetition under exam conditions — timed essays, timed letters, a surprise genre — each one followed by marking your own copy against the official grid before anyone else does, which is the habit that makes the next one better.