The Overlong Proposal
You are drafting Writing Part 2. The task asks you to write a proposal to your college principal recommending changes to the international student orientation programme. The word limit is 280–320 words. Your draft is 390 words. It opens: 'Hey guys, so basically the orientation is a bit of a mess.' It lists five problems, includes a 70-word anecdote about a friend who got lost, and puts the only recommendation in the final sentence. You use contractions, rhetorical questions and one exclamation mark because you want the proposal to sound 'personal and engaging'. The assessment criteria reward task achievement, organisation, range and accuracy, with register appropriate to the audience. You have 25 minutes left. You believe cutting the anecdote will make the proposal dull; you also believe the recommendation is already clear enough. You need to decide what to cut, what to rewrite, and whether the opening can be salvaged.
1. Identify two features of the draft that would lower the writing score, and explain each in terms of the assessment criteria rather than personal taste.
Read the worked answer
First, the opening 'Hey guys, so basically...' breaches register: a proposal to a principal requires a formal, impersonal address, and 'guys' treats the reader as a peer. This affects task achievement and register, not just tone, because the task specifies audience and purpose. Second, the draft is 390 words against a 280–320 limit and spends 70 words on an anecdote before any recommendation. That damages organisation and task achievement: the reader waits for the proposal's core, and over-length writing often loses precision. The single recommendation in the final sentence also means the 'recommend' element is underdeveloped. The exclamation mark and rhetorical questions are not automatically wrong in every genre, but in a proposal they signal a mismatch between genre conventions and audience.
2. Rewrite the first two sentences so they fit the genre, without adding new content.
Read the worked answer
Original content: orientation is a mess; problems exist. Rewrite: 'This proposal recommends three changes to the international student orientation programme. The current programme has five recurrent problems, including poor signposting and an overcrowded timetable.' This keeps the judgement ('problems') but replaces 'a bit of a mess' with a stance the principal can act on. It names the genre ('This proposal recommends') so the reader knows the purpose immediately. It avoids 'Hey guys' and 'basically', and it does not invent evidence. A good rewrite should preserve the candidate's own content while changing the interpersonal frame; the test rewards control of register, not a completely new proposal.
3. You want to keep the anecdote because it is 'engaging'. How would you decide whether to cut it, and what would you do with the word budget?
Read the worked answer
Test the anecdote against its function: does it provide evidence for a recommendation, or only local colour? If it illustrates a specific problem - a student got lost because signage was poor - it can stay as a compressed example of 15–20 words, framed as evidence: 'One incoming student missed two induction sessions because signage was unclear.' If it is a 70-word narrative about a friend, cut it. The word budget should go to the recommendation, which is currently one sentence. At 280–320 words, a proposal needs a clear problem statement, two or three recommendations with rationale, and a closing request for action. Engagement in this genre comes from precision and a clear benefit to the reader, not from informality.