L1 Written: Choosing Between Two Essay Questions with 50 Minutes Left
At 11:50 in a four-hour L1 written paper that ends at 12:30, a candidate has 50 minutes left. She spent 55 minutes on the commentary, then 80 minutes on an essay answering the question 'How is silence used to reveal power in two works you have studied?' She has written 920 words of an expected 1,200: an introduction, two body paragraphs, no conclusion. Her handwriting produces about 20 words per minute under pressure. The second essay option-on a single work she knows intimately-would require a fresh plan and introduction. She has a mental bank of quotations but no texts. Her weakest paragraph is a comparison of two minor scenes; her strongest is on a central confrontation. The mark scheme rewards argument, textual evidence, and structure. She also has 5 minutes of planned proofreading. What should she do?
1. Decide whether to continue the current essay or switch to the second option. Justify with time and word-count arithmetic.
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Continue. The arithmetic is decisive: 50 minutes at roughly 20 words per minute gives about 1,000 words, but reserving 5 minutes to proofread leaves about 900 usable words. She needs roughly 280 words to reach 1,200 and add a conclusion, which is feasible if she writes one compressed body paragraph and a short conclusion. Switching is not feasible: a new plan would take 8–10 minutes, a fresh introduction another 10, and two developed body paragraphs plus a conclusion cannot be produced in the remaining 40 usable minutes. The new essay would also lack the comparison already built into the current one. The second option’s familiarity reduces the risk of misreading the question, but it does not reduce composition time. At this stage, marginal words are worth more than a cleaner question choice. A truncated but coherent essay on the chosen question can still satisfy structure and argument criteria; a fragment on a new question is likely to fail both.
2. Propose a paragraph-by-paragraph plan for the remaining time that protects the assessment criteria.
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Use 5 minutes to outline the missing material: one body paragraph comparing the two minor scenes and a four-sentence conclusion. Spend 25 minutes writing the body paragraph, keeping it to about 180–200 words and making its topic sentence explicit about power. Spend 10 minutes on the conclusion: restate the thesis, synthesize the two works, and evaluate which use of silence is more revealing. Spend 5 minutes inserting one additional short quotation or close reference into the strongest paragraph, and check that every paragraph has a clear topic sentence. Reserve 5 minutes for proofreading. Cut any planned fourth paragraph on a third work; breadth is less important now than depth and completion. Do not spend time rewriting the introduction unless it contradicts the new conclusion. The aim is a complete, coherent argument with evidence, not maximum coverage.
3. How should she handle the missing conclusion and any quotation she cannot reproduce exactly?
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Write a short conclusion rather than leaving the essay open. Four sentences are enough: return to the question, state what the two works together show about silence and power, acknowledge a difference between them, and evaluate the stronger example. This satisfies the structure criterion without consuming time. For quotations, never invent wording, page numbers, or speaker attributions. If she cannot reproduce a phrase exactly, paraphrase it and attribute it clearly: 'when the narrator describes the pause before the confrontation' rather than quotation marks around uncertain words. A precise paraphrase is safer than a corrupted quotation, and examiners reward accurate textual reference, not decoration. If she remembers only a keyword, embed it in analysis rather than presenting it as a full quotation. Accuracy protects credibility; a vague but honest reference is better than a fabricated one.