Fourteen connectors, one idea: raising the band in Paper 1 Task 2
Paper 1 Task 2 asks for a discursive text of 250–400 words on «¿Deberían los institutos prohibir los móviles?». Emma produces 400 words containing fourteen explicit connectors (en primer lugar, por otra parte, asimismo, no obstante, cabe destacar, en definitiva), a memorized opener («En la sociedad actual en la que vivimos, este tema es muy importante»), and two examples, both drawn from her own school. Her position is clear but never tested: the counterargument appears as «algunos dicen que los móviles son útiles, pero se equivocan» and is not developed. Her lexis is safe and repetitive - cosa, problema, muy, mucho, and three uses of bueno - and she makes a single grammatical error in 400 words («es mejor que los alumnos dejan el móvil»). Her marks place her mid-band for language and lower-middle for message. Emma's own goal is «to sound more advanced», and she has begun memorizing longer lists of connectors.
1. Her accuracy is already high. Should the remaining lessons target range or argumentation - and are those actually two different problems here?
Read the worked answer
They are one problem seen twice. Her lexical plateau is partly a symptom of thin content. When a writer has nothing to concede, no causal claim and no evidence, she does not need aunque, si bien, a menos que, de no ser así or en la medida en que - so she reaches for decorative connectors instead. Give her a real claim and a real objection and the grammar of concession becomes necessary rather than ornamental. That is why buying more connector lists will make the essay worse: the connectors are already there and doing no work.
Why argumentation comes first for HL. The message criterion rewards development, balance and the ability to sustain a position; accuracy alone does not lift a mid-band script, because a text with no counterargument has nothing to be accurate about. Her single error in 400 words is already within expectations; spending a lesson on es mejor que + subjunctive would be comfortable but low-yield.
The risk to manage. Pushing for complexity can produce breakdown - long relative clauses with lost agreement. So target one structure at a time and check control before adding the next. Range without control reads as error, not ambition; the goal is a small number of structures she can deploy reliably under time pressure.
2. Identify the three changes that would move the essay up a band, in the order you would teach them, and say how you would verify transfer.
Read the worked answer
Change 1 - replace the opener with a claim. «En la sociedad actual…» could introduce any topic, so it signals a formula and delays content. Model: «Los institutos que han prohibido el móvil no han resuelto el problema del distraction: lo han trasladado al patio». A claim forces the rest of the text to defend something.
Change 2 - build one genuine concession and rebuttal. Keep her opponent's best point, state it fairly, then answer it with evidence: «Es cierto que el móvil permite avisar a casa en caso de urgencia; sin embargo, los centros que han instalado teléfonos de conserjería han cubierto esa necesidad sin los efectos de la notificación constante». Note that this requires sin embargo to mark a real contrast rather than decorate a list.
Change 3 - lexical precision. Replace cosa and problema with specific nouns (la notificación, la distracción en el aula, el ciberacoso), and replace muy importante / muy útil with verbs and collocations (afectar al rendimiento, interferir en la concentración, regular el uso). One conditional: de no establecerse límites, ….
Verification. Do not ask her to rewrite the same essay. Give an unseen prompt (e.g. ¿Deberían las redes sociales exigir edad mínima?), 20 minutes, one paragraph only, with a three-item checklist: a claim in the first sentence, one concession that is answered, zero uses of cosa. If she produces a concession but no answer to it, changes 1 and 2 have been memorized as shapes rather than understood - reteach the rebuttal with two model paragraphs before moving on.