Last check, at speed
Eight gaps. Five seconds each. Links, markers and one cleft.
Cities are defended as engines of opportunity. is accurate and incomplete. is what a city offers to somebody who can already afford six months in it. months is the real barrier, and it is a barrier of savings. savings are unevenly distributed. the people least able to move are the ones called unwilling. some people simply prefer to stay. unwillingness and inability produce the same number. decided who could come was the entry cost.
What is being assessed
Three parts. Five minutes holding several positions on one question, three minutes of questions from listeners who have read your essay, and the written 330 words with a short reflection.
The criteria are below, and they are the criteria.
Six criteria. Match each to what it looks like when somebody is doing it.
The whole unit on one card
Hold these three
| Hold this | Because |
|---|---|
| Old first, new last | Each sentence opens from what the reader already has and closes on what they do not. The next sentence starts from the new. |
| The subject is the topic | English has no separate topic slot. To front something, you pay a clause — a cleft — and that cost is what makes it emphasis. |
| Markers label joints | They name a relation; they cannot create one. They are adverbs, so they never join two clauses with a comma. |
Four items. Rewrite using the word given.
The entry cost decided who could come, not the rent. WAS
The scheme is expensive, but it works. NEVERTHELESS
Three universities are in the city. THERE
She remembered the smell, not the kindness. WHAT
The unit task
How the thirty minutes run. Two to set up, then rounds of eight: five minutes speaking, three of questions. Threes work in parallel and rotate. Four minutes at the end for the written reflection.
Part 1 · Spoken argument · 5 minutes · No notes
Hold at least three positions on your question, to listeners who have read your essay.
Five minutes, a map at the start, one thread throughout.
- Open with the map: how many positions, and whether they share a premise.
- Give each at its strongest, and name whose it is.
- Concede the point that costs you most, and answer it rather than moving past it.
- Mark your own contribution when it arrives, and put it last.
Part 2 · Questions · 3 minutes · You do not choose these
Your listeners ask three questions.
Three minutes. Pick the thread up rather than starting again.
- Question 1 — which position was that last part? on the place they lost you.
- Question 2 — is that the strongest version of that side?
- Question 3 — the listeners’ own: the position they think is missing.
- A missing fourth position is a real answer. Say what it is and why you left it out.
Part 3 · Written · 4 minutes at the end
Hand in the 330-word essay with the margin column and a short reflection.
Sixty words. Three sentences will do.
- Where did your column first stop chaining, and what would fix it?
- How many markers did you use, and how many could you name the relation for?
- Which position did you give at less than full strength, and what would it cost you to strengthen it?
Where the unit landed
Self-assessment · tick honestly, this is not collected
| Not yet | Getting there | Yes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| I start sentences with something the reader already has | |||
| I do not announce a topic and then give the sentence a second subject | |||
| I use there is / there are where English needs an existential | |||
| I can build an it-cleft and a what-cleft, and I use one per piece | |||
| I punctuate however and therefore as adverbs, not conjunctions | |||
| I can tell a contrast from a concession, and mark each correctly |
Three questions. Answer for yourself.
1. When your listeners lost the thread, where was it?
2. How many markers did your essay actually need?
3. What does a marker do?
What you can do now
Since Lesson 1 you have added: the given-new principle and the chain it builds; the four ways to get the given thing to the front, including the clefts English pays a clause for; the existential; end-weight; eight functions of discourse markers and the four that get confused; the punctuation rule that separates adverbs from conjunctions; and a diagnostic that takes thirty seconds.
And one idea that is not grammar: when something does not hold together, the repair is almost never at the joint. It is one layer down, in what the sentences are about.
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. What carries cohesion in English?
2. How does English front a topic?
Next unit — Workplace Realities. You have spent eight lessons on how English joins sentences. Next: the fifty phrasal verbs that carry most of professional speech — put off, take on, go over, fall through, get round to — which learners understand perfectly and almost never produce, and which are the single clearest marker of whether somebody sounds like they work in English.