The essay with no stand: rescuing an argumentative script at the 30-minute mark
Chidi is sitting the NECO English Paper 1 mock. He has 50 minutes for Section A: an argumentative essay of about 450 words on the topic 'Boarding school is better than day school for the Nigerian child.' At the 30-minute mark he has written 260 words: an introduction that defines boarding school and day school, a paragraph on discipline, and a 90-word story about his cousin in a boarding school who learned to iron his own clothes. He has not stated which side he is arguing, though his examples all favour boarding school. He still has three points in his plan: cost, parental involvement, and exposure to bad influences. His handwriting is large and he has used 1.5 sides of a 4-page booklet. The invigilator has just announced 20 minutes remaining. He tends to write 'I think' and 'in my own opinion' in every paragraph.
1. Identify the single biggest weakness in Chidi's script so far, and set out the order in which he should fix the problems in his remaining time.
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The biggest weakness is not length or vocabulary: the essay has no stated position. An argumentative essay is marked on whether the writer takes a stand and defends it consistently. Chidi's examples all point to boarding school, but the reader has to infer the stand, and an examiner marking two hundred scripts will not do that inference for him.
Fix in this order:
- Add a thesis sentence at the end of the introduction, e.g. 'Boarding school, despite its cost, gives the Nigerian child a discipline and independence that day school cannot.' This commits him to one side and previews his two strongest points.
- Recast the cousin story as evidence, not narrative: one clause inside the discipline paragraph.
- Delete 'I think' and 'in my own opinion' from the body. The whole essay is his opinion; repeated hedges read as uncertainty.
Length is the least urgent issue. 260 words in 30 minutes is roughly on schedule for 450 words in 50 minutes, so he is not falling behind.
2. Chidi has 20 minutes and roughly 190 words of room before he risks an unfinished script. Give a paragraph-by-paragraph plan with word budgets, and justify what you cut.
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'About 450 words' permits a band of roughly 405-495. With 260 already written, 150-190 more will land him inside the band; the aim is a finished, balanced essay, not maximum length.
- Discipline paragraph: keep, but compress the cousin story to one sentence and add the claim it illustrates (about 80 words).
- Cost and parental involvement, merged into one paragraph (about 70 words): concede that boarding school is expensive, then argue that the fee buys supervision and facilities that a day-school parent pays for separately; concede that day school allows daily contact, then argue that boarding replaces it with structured pastoral care.
- Conclusion (about 35 words): restate the stand, no new argument.
Total added: about 185, giving roughly 445 words.
The cut is 'exposure to bad influences'. It duplicates the discipline point, and writing four body paragraphs in twenty minutes is how candidates leave a script without a conclusion, which costs more than an underdeveloped point. Merging cost and parental involvement also protects him: they are two sides of one argument about what the child gains at home versus at school.
3. Rewrite the cousin anecdote as argumentative evidence in no more than 40 words, and explain what makes the rewrite work.
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Model: 'The discipline boarding school teaches is practical, not abstract: a boarder who must wash, iron and ration his own provisions at twelve carries that habit into adulthood.' (29 words)
Why it works:
- It opens with a claim ('practical, not abstract'), then supports it. The original opened with a person and a sequence of events.
- It drops names and chronology ('my cousin', 'last term', 'then he'), which are markers of narrative and signal to the examiner that the candidate has told a story instead of arguing.
- 'My cousin' becomes 'a boarder'. A private anecdote is unverifiable and reads as gossip; a generalised figure reads as illustration.
- It repeats the thesis vocabulary ('discipline'), so the paragraph visibly serves the argument rather than sitting beside it.
Note the compression: the original spent 90 words; the claim it was really making needs 30.