Two ways to start
Two openings for the same piece.
A. Nowadays life is changing very fast and it is important to reflect about our past and think about our future.
B. I have been secretary of the residents’ association since 2015, which is nine years longer than I intended.
Four questions.
1. What could you learn about the writer from opening A?
2. How many positions in time does opening B establish in one sentence?
3. What does nine years longer than I intended add?
4. In 280 words, what does an opening like A cost?
The model · 276 words
Looking Back, Looking Forward
I have been secretary of the residents’ association since 2015, which is nine years longer than I intended and eight longer than anybody has thanked me for.
When I took it on, the building had been without one for eighteen months and the boiler had failed twice. I said I would do a year. What I had not understood was that a job nobody wants is a job nobody takes off you.
Since then I have written about four hundred emails a year, chased three managing agents, and learned something I would not have predicted: that most people are perfectly willing to be organised, and almost nobody is willing to organise. That is not cynicism. It is a fact about time, and I have more of it than the family on the second floor.
Where I am now is tired in a specific and unheroic way. Nothing is going wrong. The lift works.
If nothing changes, in five years I will still be doing this, and by then I will have been secretary for fifteen years — long enough that the building will have stopped thinking of it as a role and started thinking of it as me.
The version I would prefer is that by next spring I will have found two people to split it, and that this time in two years I will be attending meetings I do not run.
That depends on asking properly, in a room, rather than in an email nobody answers. I have been not doing this since March.
I said a year. It has been nine. I do not regret it, and I would like it to end.
Four questions about the model.
1. Paragraph two stands where?
2. What is the function of Where I am now is tired in a specific and unheroic way?
3. Why does the default projection come before the preferred one?
4. I have been not doing this since March. What is that sentence doing?
Repair a weaker one
The five moves of the model: the position now, with the tension in it · a past point, and what had already happened by then · what the period taught · the default projection · the preferred version, and what it depends on.
Below, a second piece with four sentences removed.
Four sentences have been removed. Put each one back where it belongs.
I have been the person who cooks in this house since my mother stopped, which was in 2018 and was not announced. [1]
By the time I noticed, I had been doing it for about four months. [2] She had simply stopped, and I had simply started, and neither of us said anything about it for a year.
[3] It is a small daily competence that nobody in my family can now do without, which is a strange kind of power to have acquired by accident.
If nothing changes, in five years I will still be doing it, and by then I will have cooked something like six thousand meals in this kitchen. [4] The version I would prefer is that somebody else learns, badly, and I eat it.
That depends on my being willing to eat something worse for six months, which is the part I keep not agreeing to.
Before you write
Eight sentences of the kind you are about to write. Choose.
1. I ___ this since 2015.
2. When I took it on, the building ___ without one for eighteen months.
3. Since then I ___ about four hundred emails a year.
4. By then I ___ secretary for fifteen years.
5. If nothing changes, in five years I ___ this.
6. By next spring I ___ two people to split it.
7. This time in two years I ___ meetings I do not run.
8. I ___ a year. It ___ nine.
Six sentences from drafts. Four are tenses; two are about what a 280-word piece can afford.
1. Nowadays life is changing fast and we must reflect about our past. — 280 words
2. Since 2015 I am the secretary.
3. When I took it on the boiler has failed twice.
4. By then I will be doing it for fifteen years.
5. In conclusion, I think that time passes and people change. — a personal piece
6. This time next year I will attend meetings I do not run. — inside that time
Write it
Task card · Writing · Alone · 17 minutes
Write "Looking Back, Looking Forward" — 280 words on something you have been doing or being for several years.
Five moves, in order. Seventeen minutes writing, six checking.
- Open with your position now and the tension inside it. A number in the first sentence helps.
- Go to a past point and say what had already happened by then. Use the past perfect at least once.
- Say what the period has taught you — something you would not have predicted.
- Give the default projection first — if nothing changes — then the preferred version.
- End on what it depends on, and be specific about the thing you have not done.
Task card · Checking · Pairs · 6 minutes
Swap. You are not marking. You are locating the writer four times.
Six minutes, four answers, written in the margin.
- For each paragraph, write where the writer is standing: now, a past point, a future point.
- If you cannot tell, write "where?" — that paragraph has no vantage phrase.
- Find the default projection and the preferred one. Are they clearly separated?
- Last: what does the piece depend on? If you cannot point at one thing, the last move is missing.
The "where?" notes are the whole check. A reflective-projective piece works by moving the reader between positions in time and telling them each time. A paragraph a reader cannot locate is a paragraph they are reading from the wrong place.
What the margins said
Two questions.
1. How many "where?" notes did you get?
2. Were the default projection and the preferred one clearly separated?
Both directions, held at once
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. Why does the default projection come before the preferred one?
2. What does a reader need in every paragraph?
Next. The last lesson of B1 — the exit assessment, and a look back over twelve units.