Here's a paragraph a student wrote for me a few weeks ago, before we touched it:
"In conclusion, as I have mentioned before in this essay, it can be said that technology has both advantages and disadvantages, and everyone should think carefully about how they use it in their daily lives, since it is a complex issue with many different perspectives to consider."
Forty two words. Zero new information. It restates the introduction almost sentence for sentence and adds a vague call to reflection that says nothing about her actual argument. In Spanish, this closing move is normal, expected even: you circle back, soften your stance, remind the reader of the terrain you covered. In an English C2 essay, that same paragraph reads as if the writer ran out of ideas three lines from the end.
Where the habit comes from
Spanish argumentative writing, the kind taught through most of secondary school and into university, tends to build slowly. A long, careful introduction that sets up the topic from several angles. Body paragraphs that develop the theme. And a conclusion that, more often than not, summarizes rather than concludes: it reflects the introduction back at the reader, sometimes almost word for word.
English essay writing, particularly at C2, expects the conclusion to do something. Not summarize what came before. Actually commit. Cambridge's own descriptors for Global Achievement at this level reward candidates who "hold the reader's attention with ease" and complete the task effectively, and a conclusion that just restates the intro doesn't complete anything. It just stops.
I see this constantly with strong candidates, the ones whose grammar is close to flawless and whose vocabulary range is genuinely impressive. The essay reads well sentence by sentence. Then you get to the end and it deflates. Global Achievement takes the hit even though Grammatical Range, Vocabulary, and Coherence might all be solid, because Global Achievement is judging the whole text as a piece of communication, not its parts.
What the introduction is doing wrong too
It's not only the conclusion. The Spanish model tends to open wide: several sentences establishing the general importance of the topic before narrowing toward the actual question. Technology has changed the world in countless ways. Over the past few decades our daily habits have shifted dramatically. Etc. By the time the essay actually says anything specific, you've read sixty or seventy words that could apply to almost any topic.
CPE Part 1 gives you a specific question and two bullet points to address, usually built from a short input text you've been given. The task wants you engaging with that question directly, early, and specifically. An essay that spends its first paragraph warming up the room hasn't used that space well. Worse, the task is often a fixed word count, somewhere around 240 to 280 words, so every sentence spent on general throat clearing is a sentence not spent developing an actual point.
The CPE Writing Part 1 essay expects a clear position, developed with specific reasons rather than general observation. Two body paragraphs are usually enough if each one is genuinely developed, one per bullet point from the task, plus your own third idea if the rubric asks for it.
The corrected version, side by side
Here's what we did with that closing paragraph in class. Not by translating it more carefully. By asking a different question: what does this essay actually want to leave the reader with?
"Technology, then, is not something we can simply choose to accept or reject. The more useful question is how we manage it, and that is a responsibility schools and parents have barely begun to take seriously."
Twenty six words. It doesn't summarize the essay. It takes a position the reader hasn't quite heard yet, one that grows out of the argument but pushes past it. That's the shift that matters here: a good C2 conclusion adds a final thought, even a small one, instead of packaging up what already happened.
We made the same change to her opening. Out went the two sentences about technology transforming daily life in general. In came a single sentence naming the actual tension the task asked about, followed immediately by her thesis. Shorter introduction, same essay length overall, more room left for development in the body.
A structure that actually fits the word count
For an essay sitting around 250 words, something closer to this tends to work better than the five paragraph model most students default to:
One or two sentences of introduction that state the issue and your position. Not three paragraphs of context. Two.
A first body paragraph developing one bullet point from the task, with a specific example or reason, not a general claim restated with different words.
A second body paragraph doing the same for the other bullet point, ideally with some kind of contrast or tension with the first, because that's what makes an essay feel argued rather than listed.
A conclusion of one or two sentences that commits to something, even something modest, rather than echoing the introduction.
That's four short sections instead of the five or six paragraphs many candidates try to force into 250 words, which usually means every paragraph ends up underdeveloped because there simply isn't room.
Read your conclusion on its own, without the rest of the essay. If it could sit at the top of the essay instead of the bottom and still make sense, it's not doing its job. A real conclusion should only make sense at the end, because it depends on the argument that came before it.
Try this with your next practice essay, before you write a single word of the conclusion: write one sentence, separately, that states what you actually think now that you've made your argument. Not what the essay is about. What you think. Then build the conclusion around that sentence instead of around a summary. It's a small habit, but it's the one that tends to move Global Achievement more than another week of vocabulary lists.