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Exam guide & reading text

C2 Paper 05 — Essay: Read the two texts about adapting historic buildings for modern use — Writing

"C2 Paper 05 — Essay: Read the two texts about adapting historic buildings for modern use" 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.

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How should I approach this C2 writing task?

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.

Task prompt

Write an essay summarising and evaluating the key points in both texts. Integrate the arguments rather than discussing the texts separately, and use your own ideas to decide when adaptation protects heritage and when it undermines what should be preserved.

Word limit: 280 words

Input texts

Continuity Through Adaptation

Historic buildings survive when communities have reasons to enter, use and care for them. Converting them for housing, work or cultural activity may require visible alterations, but an untouched structure that remains empty is not truly preserved. New uses can finance maintenance and allow each generation to add a meaningful layer to the building’s history. The essential task is to identify which features carry exceptional cultural value and protect them, rather than treating every later detail as equally sacred. Sensitive adaptation accepts that heritage is a living relationship between place and society, not a frozen architectural display.

The Cost of Convenient Reuse

Arguments for adaptation often begin with economic realism and end by changing the very qualities that made a building worth preserving. Once commercial use becomes the condition of survival, decisions favour visitor numbers, flexible interiors and modern branding over historical integrity. Small alterations accumulate, while lost materials and spatial relationships cannot be recreated later. Some buildings should certainly evolve, but others have value precisely because they provide rare evidence of a particular period or way of life. Society may need to fund their conservation directly instead of requiring every historic place to justify itself through contemporary utility.

Assessment criteria

  • Content: All points addressed with relevant detail and examples.
  • Communicative achievement: Appropriate register and tone for the target reader.
  • Organisation: Clear paragraphing with cohesive devices linking ideas.
  • Language: Wide range of vocabulary and structures used with control and accuracy.