Compare what writers believe about advice without treating a shared topic as a shared position. Identify the exact claim, the reason offered for it and any condition that limits it. Different writers may agree about one aspect of advice and disagree about another.
“Advice is useful” is too broad for a precise comparison. Writers might be discussing the relevance of earlier experience, the value of a trial, the recipient’s purpose or responsibility for a decision. State the issue as a question, then locate each writer’s answer to that same question.
A writer who does not discuss an issue has not thereby opposed another writer’s view. Absence of a position cannot supply evidence of either agreement or disagreement.
I support trying it if we can reverse the change expresses conditional support. It is different from unconditional approval, from a guarantee of success and from refusal to begin until the outcome is known.
Two writers can share a condition in different language. Compare the relationship between the ideas, rather than count repeated words such as experience, trial or responsibility.
| Dimension | Question to ask |
|---|---|
| Competence | Is the adviser regarded as capable in the work they know? |
| Relevance | Does that experience establish fit to the recipient’s purpose? |
| Procedure | Should a method be adapted before a trial or tested intact first? |
| Evidence | What can the result of the actual trial establish? |
| Responsibility | Who owns the choice, and what duties remain with the adviser? |
Do not turn respect for competence into acceptance of every recommendation. Equally, a recipient’s responsibility does not automatically remove an adviser’s duty to explain a proposal carefully.
Writers can share the aim of helping someone make an informed choice while preferring different ways to begin. One might offer a practical example first; another might ask about the goal first. That is a difference of approach, not necessarily a disagreement about who should own the goal.
Ask whether the conflict concerns the end, the means, the sequence or the standard of evidence. Keep the comparison on the dimension named in the question.
An account can include an earlier assumption, a colleague’s interpretation and the writer’s later judgement. Attribute each view correctly. Words such as initially, I disagreed and I now help show the change, but the surrounding explanation establishes what changed.
An encouraging result for one approach does not by itself give the outcome of an approach that was never tried. Preserve limits on what the writer claims to know.
For the aspect asked about, note each writer’s stance and qualification: for example, supports testing, provided a return route remains. You do not need a full summary of every text.
To answer a question about a writer who differs from the others, verify the relevant position in all the texts. One unusual phrase is not enough. To find a shared view, support the match with evidence from both the reference writer and the candidate.
C1 Advanced Reading and Use of English Part 6 contains four short texts and four cross-text multiple-matching questions. It tests understanding and comparison of opinions and attitudes across texts.
Cambridge English exam format reference. All practice accounts and the book discussed in Exercises 3 are fictional.
Exercises 1: interpret a writer’s changing view of advice (8 questions). Exercises 2: compare six independent pairs of viewpoints (6 questions). Exercises 3: compare four writers’ reviews of a fictional book about advice in Part 6-style practice (4 questions).
Read each pair in full in Exercises 2. In Exercises 3, compare the particular issue named in each question across Texts A–D. Text letters keep their identity when the answer cards move.
Answer every question in a block before selecting Check answers. Feedback includes exact quotations with paragraph references and explanations of all alternatives. Try again resets only that block and shuffles the answer cards.
Read the complete account and choose the answer supported by the writer’s developing position. There are 8 questions.
Complete all 8 answers before selecting Check answers. You can refer to the texts throughout. Click any part of an answer card.
An original fictional account.
Paragraph P1When we began planning evening drawing sessions in the unused room behind a café, I asked several experienced organisers for advice. I wanted more than information about tables and materials. I hoped somebody's confidence would relieve me of the uncomfortable business of choosing. A recommendation delivered firmly seemed capable of turning an uncertain plan into something already justified. Looking back, I was asking another person's experience to do work it could not do on its own: establish what success should mean for us.
Paragraph P2The first organiser had run popular arts festivals. She recommended a large opening evening, with several demonstrations and a programme advertised across the town. Her events had attracted impressive crowds, and I had no reason to doubt her skill. Yet we were trying to create a small weekly place where people unused to drawing would feel able to practise. A crowded introduction might help, but the size of an opening audience was not the result by which we intended to judge the sessions. Her record answered a question about attracting people more clearly than it answered our question about helping them return.
Paragraph P3I initially treated that difference as a weakness in her recommendation. It was more fairly understood as something we had failed to explain. We had described the room and asked what we should do, without saying what we most wanted it to enable. Once I stated our purpose, I could ask which parts of her experience addressed it. Advice became easier to assess when we supplied a goal, rather than waited for a confident proposal to supply one for us. The advice had not necessarily deteriorated; the question against which we judged it had become clearer.
Paragraph P4A drawing teacher took another approach. Before proposing a routine, he asked who would prepare the materials, how often the room was free and whether visitors would be expected to bring their own equipment. At first, his questions seemed a delay before the useful part. Then I understood that they were determining whether his suggestion would be usable. He proposed leaving a simple set of materials ready for each visitor and trying a short demonstration before individual practice. The questions did not replace a recommendation. They helped establish the conditions under which it made sense.
Paragraph P5One colleague said that preferring the teacher's approach showed I did not trust the festival organiser. I disagreed. Confidence in her ability to run festivals was not confidence that the same format would serve our weekly sessions. It would have been easier to call one adviser wise and the other mistaken. That would have avoided explaining why particular experience fitted particular work. Respecting someone's competence did not require assigning their recommendation a reach beyond the circumstances it addressed.
Paragraph P6We used the teacher's prepared-materials idea but shortened his suggested demonstration, because our trial session was briefer than the one he had described. He agreed that the adjustment was reasonable. I was no longer choosing between obediently copying advice and refusing it. Still, the change had a consequence for what we could claim afterwards: a successful session would support the arrangement we had actually tried, not every detail of the teacher's original version. Adapting a suggestion and testing it unchanged are different activities, even when both are sensible.
Paragraph P7After two sessions, several visitors said they wanted to come back. My colleague called this proof that ignoring the festival organiser had been the right decision. I could not go that far. We had evidence that our chosen arrangement was promising; we had not run the alternative and could not report its outcome. Nor did a small beginning establish that a larger introduction could never help. Our result justified continuing and observing, rather than turning a comparison we had never made into a verdict against another person's advice.
Paragraph P8I now value advice less as a supply of borrowed certainty and more as a way of making a decision intelligible. A helpful adviser can identify an assumption, explain a method or notice a difficulty we have missed. None of that requires them to choose our purpose or carry all the consequences for us. We still have to judge what we adopt, what we change and what we have evidence to conclude. That responsibility is not a reason to seek no advice. It is part of using advice rather than merely sheltering behind the person who gives it.
Read both complete viewpoints in each pair. Choose the comparison that preserves their positions, conditions and differences. There are 6 questions.
Complete all 6 answers before selecting Check answers. You can refer to the texts throughout. Click any part of an answer card.
For questions 1–4, choose from the writers in Texts A–D. Each question has one answer; the texts may be chosen more than once. Compare opinions on the specific issue named. Suggested practice time: 12 minutes; this is a practice target, not a separate official exam time limit.
Complete all 4 answers before selecting Check answers. You can refer to the texts throughout. Click any part of an answer card.
Four writers review a fictional book about giving and using advice. Read Texts A–D, then answer the four questions below.
Paragraph A1The book Advice in Context is at its best when it asks what an experienced person's success actually establishes. An impressive record does not, by itself, show that the same method suits the next person. A recipient may have a different purpose or a different set of resources. I would revise a recommendation before trying it when those differences matter, rather than preserve the original method merely to see its effects. The adviser's earlier results are worth knowing, but they cannot choose the recipient's objective or settle the fit.
Paragraph A2I am less persuaded by the book's enthusiasm for consulting incompatible recommendations. For someone still deciding, opposing prescriptions usually obscure the basis for a choice rather than clarify it. I prefer one considered proposal whose assumptions can be examined carefully. That preference does not make the adviser the owner of my eventual decision. Even if I follow the proposal exactly, responsibility for deciding to use it remains mine. Asking for advice should help me exercise judgement, not provide somebody behind whom to hide.
Paragraph B1The author is too reluctant to give a proven record its due. When a method has repeatedly produced good results, that record is sufficient for me to judge it suitable for a newcomer in the same broad activity, before investigating the newcomer's individual circumstances. I would first try the advised procedure without alteration: otherwise a disappointing result may tell us only about our changes. Hearing competing recommendations is useful, because their differences make the reasons for preferring one method easier to see. The comparison should end in a clear choice that can be tested faithfully.
Paragraph B2One consequence of that approach is often neglected. If a newcomer follows the recommended method faithfully and the expected result fails to materialise, responsibility for that recommendation lies with the adviser rather than with the person who relied on it. We ask an experienced person precisely because the newcomer may lack a basis for judging the method independently. It seems inconsistent to encourage that reliance and then insist that the person who followed the instructions must own the decision and its disappointing consequences.
Paragraph C1I welcome the book's challenge to the idea that an adviser's own success settles a recommendation's relevance. Results achieved for one aim, with one set of resources, do not establish that the same procedure is suitable for another recipient. The useful question is how that procedure relates to the present task. I would alter it before a trial if the recipient's circumstances called for a change. Keeping it intact simply because it belongs to a successful person would make their situation the measure of ours, without showing why it should be.
Paragraph C2Competing advice helps expose those assumptions. Two recommendations that cannot both be followed may still make the recipient clearer about the goal and the sacrifices each route would involve. I would rather examine that disagreement than remove it from view. But the final choice remains the recipient's responsibility, including when a recommendation is followed faithfully and gives a disappointing result. An adviser must explain a proposal honestly; that duty does not transfer ownership of the recipient's decision.
Paragraph D1The most useful section of the book concerns small trials. I would keep an advised procedure intact for the first test, so that the result tells us about the procedure offered. A mixture of the advice and several changes of our own may be sensible in practice, but it answers a different question. We can adapt afterwards, once we have observed the original approach on a limited scale. I also find conflicting recommendations clarifying: they reveal distinct routes that can be compared, rather than leave one familiar route looking inevitable.
Paragraph D2Such a trial is still a decision made by the recipient. Following a recommendation exactly does not hand responsibility for choosing it to the adviser if the result disappoints. The recipient has to judge whether the proposed test and its possible costs are acceptable. This is compatible with requiring care from the adviser, whose explanation should be open to questions. The book is valuable when it gives that exchange a structure, less so when readers treat a named method as a way to avoid making a choice.