Task prompt
Read the two texts below. Write an essay that summarises and evaluates their key points. Express the ideas in your own words as far as possible and include your own views on the issue. Write 240–280 words.
Word limit: 280 words
"Cultural Heritage in a Changing World" is a C2 Proficiency Writing practice task (essay). Cambridge assesses content, communicative achievement, organisation and language on a scale from 0 to 5 per criterion. Plan before you write: identify the target reader, the required register and the number of points you must address. At C2, examiners expect sophisticated vocabulary used accurately, varied sentence structures and clear paragraphing.
Plan the essay before writing, address every prompt point, keep the expected register, respect the word limit, and use feedback to improve content, organisation, grammar range, and vocabulary precision.
Read the two texts below. Write an essay that summarises and evaluates their key points. Express the ideas in your own words as far as possible and include your own views on the issue. Write 240–280 words.
Word limit: 280 words
Historic buildings, languages and customs give communities a sense of continuity, particularly during periods of rapid social change. Protecting them can support education, tourism and local pride, but their value is not confined to nostalgia. They provide evidence of how previous generations solved problems, organised relationships and expressed ideas. A society that erases its past too readily may lose the ability to understand why present institutions look as they do, or to recognise alternatives to current ways of living. They can also help newcomers understand the place they have joined and contribute to it with greater confidence.
Heritage can become restrictive when it is presented as a fixed set of traditions that everyone must preserve unchanged. Communities are not museums, and younger generations may need to adapt inherited practices to fit new values and circumstances. Deciding what counts as heritage can also be political, since some histories receive public attention while others are ignored. Preservation is most convincing when it includes debate, allows change and makes space for groups whose experiences were previously excluded from the official story. The aim should be to keep heritage meaningful and shared, not to use it as a test of who is entitled to belong.