The 32-Minute Essay: Cutting, Committing and Counting Words
Candidate B reaches Part 1 of the writing paper with 32 minutes left, having overspent on the reading paper. The task: an essay of 240–280 words on 'To what extent has remote working changed the character of city centres?' Two source texts are supplied. Text 1, from a business association, reports that office vacancy rates in the region's largest city rose from 8% to 19% over five years. Text 2, from a residents' group, reports that evening footfall in residential districts rose over the same period and argues that the centre has become 'a place people pass through rather than stay in'. The candidate's plan has five paragraphs: (1) define remote work, (2) summarise Text 1, (3) summarise Text 2, (4) an anecdote about a cousin who moved to Lisbon, (5) a conclusion stating that 'both sides have valid points'. Her drafted opening sentence reads: 'Nowadays, remote work is a hot topic which is discussed by many people all over the world.'
1. Justify the single paragraph that must be cut and the conclusion that must be rewritten, in terms of what the question is asking.
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Cut paragraph 4 (the cousin in Lisbon). It is the only paragraph that does none of the three things the task rewards: it does not answer the extent question, it does not engage either source text, and it invites a register slip into anecdote. At 55–60 words it consumes a fifth of a 260-word budget - the price of one fully developed body paragraph - for zero evidential return. Personal experience is not evidence in an essay whose sources are supplied.
Rewrite the conclusion. 'Both sides have valid points' fails because the question asks to what extent, and that phrase is a refusal to answer. It is also logically weak: the two texts are not in opposition. Text 1 measures commercial occupancy; Text 2 measures evening footfall in residential districts. They can both be true, and the interesting essay says so - the centre has lost its daytime working population and gained an evening residential one, which is a change in character, not a decline.
The revised architecture (260 words): opening + thesis, 45; paragraph engaging Text 1 and conceding its limits, 70; paragraph using Text 2 to qualify Text 1 and stating your own position, 75; conclusion giving a degree ('substantially, but unevenly'), 45. Every paragraph does work; nothing is described that is not used.
2. Rewrite the opening sentence and explain what makes the original unsalvageable at this level.
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Rewrite: 'An office vacancy rate that climbs from 8% to 19% in five years looks like the obituary of the city centre. The evening footfall figures from the same period suggest a different story: not emptiness, but a change of shift.'
Why the original fails:
- Formulaic framing. 'Nowadays … is a hot topic which is discussed by many people' is a memorised shell. It signals a candidate writing about a topic rather than arguing one.
- No thesis. The sentence contains no position, so the reader has no expectation to carry forward. In an essay whose instruction is 'to what extent', the first paragraph must stake a claim.
- Empty generalisation. 'Many people all over the world' asserts nothing checkable and inflates register in the wrong direction: it is simultaneously grand and vague.
- Wasted words. Twenty words spent before the argument begins, out of a 260-word budget.
Why the rewrite works. It uses the figure the source supplies (specificity), sets the two sources against each other in one image (synthesis, not summary), and ends on a phrase - 'a change of shift' - that promises a judgement the rest of the essay will have to support. Note the length: 38 words doing the work of an introduction.
3. Allocate the 32 minutes and specify what the checking phase should actually target.
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Allocation:
- 0:00–4:00 - Discard the old plan and write a four-line skeleton: thesis, Text 1 point, Text 2 qualification, verdict. Do not write sentences yet.
- 4:00–26:00 - Draft in one pass, no backtracking. A 260-word target needs roughly 12 words a minute, which is slow for drafting but includes thinking time at paragraph boundaries.
- 26:00–31:00 - Check.
- 31:00–32:00 - Count words and confirm the total falls inside 240–280; aim for 255 so that a miscount in either direction stays legal.
What the check should target, in priority order:
- Does every paragraph advance the thesis? Delete any sentence that only summarises.
- Are both sources explicitly engaged, and is the relationship between them stated? Refer to them consistently (Text 1 / Text 2) rather than vaguely ('some people say').
- Verb agreement and articles in the sentences added under time pressure - the last two paragraphs typically contain the errors.
- Hedging calibration. Claiming remote work 'destroyed' the city centre overstates two data points; 'has substantially reconfigured' is defensible.
What not to do in the checking phase: do not rewrite the introduction. It has already been read as a statement of intent, and rewriting it consumes the time needed for the accuracy check, which is where the marks are bleeding.