The 38-Minute Essay: Length, Register and a Memorised Opener
Darina has 38 minutes left of the 60-minute writing paper. The task reads: "Some people believe university tuition should be free for everyone; others argue that students should contribute towards the cost. Discuss both views and give your own opinion. Write at least 250 words." Her plan is: a two-sentence introduction, one body paragraph on free tuition with a funding example, one body paragraph on student contribution, a one-sentence opinion, and a conclusion. She writes by hand at roughly 10 words a minute when composing, and her practice essays usually run to 320 words. She believes longer is safer and has budgeted no time for checking. She has already written her first sentence: "Since the dawn of time, education has been the key to success, and kids from poor families can't afford university, so the government should just pay."
1. Allocate her 38 minutes and set a word target. Justify both numbers.
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Target: 260–280 words. Allocation: 3 min planning, 30 min writing, 5 min checking.
Justification:
- Writing time. At ~10 words per minute of composing, 30 minutes yields roughly 300 words, minus the pauses where she stops to think. A 260–280 target leaves margin, whereas aiming for 320 guarantees she is still writing when time is called.
- Why more is not safer. The task says "at least 250". Marks come from task response, coherence, vocabulary range and grammatical accuracy - none of which improve reliably with a 70-word overshoot. What overshooting does do is remove checking time, and unchecked errors in articles, agreement and sentence boundaries are exactly what costs her band points.
- Checking is not optional. Five minutes is enough to scan for third-person -s, plural -s, articles before singular count nouns, and any sentence without a main verb. These are the highest-frequency errors in timed handwritten scripts.
- Plan the opinion paragraph before writing it. If the opinion is only decided at minute 34, it typically degenerates into a repetition of the introduction.
2. Evaluate her opening sentence and rewrite it in one or two sentences.
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Diagnosis - four separate faults:
- Memorised formula. "Since the dawn of time..." is a stock opener. Examiners recognise it instantly and it signals a rehearsed script rather than an answer to this prompt; it earns nothing and can actively damage the impression of genuine response.
- Register clash. "kids" is informal, and "just pay" is conversational. In an argumentative essay "children from low-income families" and "should fund" are required.
- It answers instead of framing. The task asks for both views. Her sentence commits to one side before the other side has been presented, so the second body paragraph will read as an afterthought.
- It compresses two unrelated ideas (the importance of education; affordability) into one clause chain, producing a comma splice with "so" as a weak connector.
Rewrite: "Whether university should be funded entirely by the state or partly by students is a question that divides opinion. This essay examines the arguments on both sides before concluding that a mixed funding model is preferable."
That version is on-task, formal, and signposts the structure the examiner will look for.
3. At minute 33 she has 232 words and no conclusion. Should she add a conclusion, pad with another example, or stop writing and check?
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Add a two-sentence conclusion, then check for the remaining time.
Reasoning, in priority order:
- Under-length is a direct, predictable penalty. At 232 words she is below the 250 minimum and will lose task-response marks regardless of quality. Two short sentences - roughly 25–30 words - bring her over the line. Any option that leaves her under 250 is worse than the alternative.
- A conclusion is the cheapest way to add words that also earns marks. It restates the position and closes the argument, which coherence rewards. A new example at minute 34, by contrast, will be undeveloped and will look bolted on.
- Do not pad with generic filler. "In conclusion, as we all know, this is a very important topic in today's world" adds words but signals weak lexical resource and weak task response; it does not raise the word count profitably.
- Whatever remains goes to the error scan. Even three minutes is enough to catch the article and agreement slips that a rushed final paragraph will contain.