Essay under pressure: depth before coverage
Writing Task 2: a 150–200 word essay. Prompt: 'Some people believe that remote working damages collaboration between colleagues. To what extent do you agree?' You have 25 minutes left, including checking. Your draft is 95 words: an introduction and one body paragraph arguing that commuting time is saved and that meetings can be scheduled deliberately. Your plan had a second body paragraph on informal contact and team trust, plus a conclusion. Rereading, you notice 'a lot of people think', 'things like that', and a sentence that repeats the prompt almost word for word. You are a careful writer who normally edits heavily, and you know the task rewards a clear position sustained across the whole essay rather than a list of points.
1. You have 95 words and 25 minutes. Set a word budget and decide whether the second body paragraph survives.
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Target 175–185 words, keeping a 15-word cushion under the 200 limit.
Budget: introduction 30 (already written - trim to 30), body 1 about 55 (keep the commuting point, cut the repetition), body 2 about 55, conclusion about 30, with five minutes reserved for editing.
The second paragraph survives, but compressed: one claim (remote work removes incidental contact), one concrete example (a new joiner who learns by overhearing), one link back to the question ('which is why I agree only in part'). One developed example outscores three undeveloped assertions.
What must not survive is a survey of advantages and disadvantages. The prompt asks 'to what extent', so the essay must commit: partial agreement, with a stated condition - collaboration suffers when remote work is total, not when it is hybrid.
Write the conclusion before polishing sentences. An essay with a position and no conclusion reads as unfinished; an essay with a conclusion and two slightly rough sentences does not. Sequence: finish content, then fix register, then check length.
2. Replace the informal phrasing and explain what each change buys you.
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- 'a lot of people think' → 'it is often argued' / 'many employers assume'. Buys an academic stance that reports a view rather than adopting it, and it sets up your counter-argument cleanly.
- 'things like that' → name them: 'informal mentoring, quick questions, overheard problem-solving'. The vague phrase signals an undeveloped idea; specificity is exactly what the lexical resource criterion rewards.
- Prompt-echoing sentence → paraphrase: 'whether dispersed teams can still build trust'. Shows you have processed the question rather than copied it, and it prevents the introduction from spending 25 words on nothing.
- Contractions, 'really', 'very' → remove or replace with a precise modifier ('substantially', 'in most teams').
Reasoning: register is not decoration. Informal phrasing costs marks in lexical range and register even when the grammar is flawless, and these are the cheapest marks to recover in a final five-minute sweep. Do one targeted pass for these four items rather than a general reread, which tends to produce small edits and no structural improvement.
3. You reach 190 words with the conclusion unwritten. What now?
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Cut before you add. The 200-word ceiling is hard, and an over-length script has clearly not been shaped.
Find 25–30 words in body 1 that repeat the introduction or restate the prompt. Typically the second sentence of a body paragraph is a paraphrase of the first; deleting it costs nothing and buys exactly the space a conclusion needs.
Write a two-sentence conclusion: a position ('Remote work damages collaboration mainly when it is total, not when it is structured') plus the condition that limits it. Do not introduce a new argument - there is no room to support it, and an unsupported claim in the final line reads worse than no final line.
If you cannot find 25 words to cut within 90 seconds, write the conclusion anyway and accept 200–205 words. A slightly over-length essay with a clear position and a conclusion is marked more kindly than a 190-word essay that stops mid-argument. Afterwards, check the task instruction for anything missed - for example, whether you were asked to give your own view explicitly.