Structuring the Extended Response on the Prescribed Issue
The prescribed issue concerns the relationship between individual identity and group belonging. You have 40 minutes and must write 400–500 characters in Japanese. You have three possible examples: a school festival committee you led, a family expectation you resisted, and a news story you read about rural depopulation. You draft an introduction stating 「私は集団に属することが大切だと思う」 and then plan to describe all three examples. A practice marker's note on your earlier work said: 「主張はあるが、根拠の使い方が浅い。例が多く、分析が少ない。」
1. Which examples should you keep, and how should the introduction change? Give a concrete plan within the 400–500 character limit.
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Keep two, drop one. The marker's note diagnoses breadth without depth, so adding examples repeats the error.
- Keep the family-expectation example - it lets you analyse tension between individual and group, which is the issue's core.
- Keep one of the other two. The festival committee is better than the news story because it is first-hand: you can analyse your own reasoning, whereas a news story invites summary rather than analysis. Drop the news story, or use it in a single clause as context, not as a case.
- Change the introduction. 「大切だと思う」 states a platitude and commits you to defending belonging, which flattens the tension your best example contains. Replace it with a qualified claim, e.g. 「集団への所属は、個人の選択を支える場合もあれば、抑え込む場合もある。重要なのは所属の有無ではなく、所属の中で自分が何を選べるかだ。」 This sets up analysis of conditions, which is what the examples can actually support.
Budget: introduction ≈80 characters, example one ≈150, example two ≈150, conclusion ≈70, connectives ≈30. That lands inside 400–500.
2. Rewrite your conclusion so it follows from the analysis rather than restating the introduction, and explain the difference in 2–3 sentences.
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Model conclusion (original): 「二つの例に共通するのは、所属そのものが問題なのではなく、所属の中で選択の余地が残されているかどうかだった。だから私が問いたいのは、どの集団に属するかではなく、その集団が自分にどんな選択を許すかである。」
Why this is a conclusion, not a restatement: A restated introduction repeats the opening claim at the same level of generality. This conclusion derives a narrower claim from the two cases - it names the common variable (room for choice) that the analysis exposed, and it converts the original topic into a sharper question. The marker can see the reasoning moved. It also avoids the common trap of introducing a new example in the final paragraph, which reads as an unfinished essay rather than a resolved one.