Section II · toolkit
Once you have the theme, the rest is craft, and craft under a thirty-minute clock mostly comes down to having decided things in advance.
Marking
Two markers score the thinking and the writing together. Your conclusion is not the point, nor is whether they agree with it, nor how many of the quotes you managed to work in.
Short essays score well, so length is a poor thing to optimise. Six tight paragraphs beat nine loose ones.
Structure
Improvising structure under time goes badly. Learn one shape and vary the content. This works for Task A, and for Task B with the register changed.
01 Open on the tension
One or two sentences stating the disagreement the comments are having. No definitions, no throat-clearing.
02 State your position
One sentence. The marker should know your answer by the end of the first paragraph.
03 The strongest case for it
One paragraph, one example, developed rather than listed.
04 The best objection, conceded
This paragraph is what separates scores. Put it at its strongest.
05 Why your position survives
A genuine answer to the objection you have just made, rather than a restatement of your thesis.
06 Close on the cost
What your position asks us to give up. Endings that admit a price read as thought; summaries read as filler.
Evidence
Name one comment and argue with it; that is worth more than gesturing at all four. Quote it, say what it assumes, then say why the assumption holds or fails.
Acton’s claim is often read as a fact about office. It is better read as a claim about certainty, and if that is right the remedy is not shorter terms but someone in the room able to say no.
Paraphrasing all four comments in your opening paragraph is the commonest waste of the thirty minutes. The markers have read them.
Specific beats grand: a named case with a date does more than a sweep through history. Eight or ten flexible examples you genuinely know something about will carry you further than a hundred you can only name. A piece of legislation, a clinical dilemma, a historical episode, a study, and for Task B something from your own life.
Task B rewards the first person. A concrete personal observation reads as evidence you have thought about the question rather than read about it.
Openings
The dictionary
“The Oxford English Dictionary defines freedom as…”
Since the dawn of time
Opening on the whole of human history spends a sentence saying nothing.
The rhetorical question stack
Three questions in a row is a stalling device and reads as one.
The quote parade
Restating the four comments before you have said anything of your own.
Sentences
Vary sentence length deliberately; a short one after two long ones does more work than any adjective. Prefer concrete nouns to abstract ones and cut very, quite, really, arguably, it is important to note that. If a three-clause sentence might not parse, break it in two. Markers cannot reward thinking they cannot follow.
Stop writing at twenty-seven minutes, even mid-argument, and fix only the sentences that do not parse. A confident essay missing its final paragraph outscores a complete one you never reread. One unfinished sentence costs less than three incoherent ones.