Two ways to start
Two openings for the same essay.
A. Nowadays, compulsory voting is a really very controversial topic which is discussed by many people all around the world.
B. Both sides of this argument accept the same framing, and neither has ever been persuaded by it. That is usually a sign that the framing is wrong.
Four questions.
1. What has A told the reader?
2. How many intensifiers is A carrying, and what are they doing?
3. What has B done in two sentences?
4. Is A wrong?
The model · 345 words
Where the argument about compulsory voting actually is
The argument about compulsory voting is almost always framed as freedom against participation. One side says a citizen fined for not voting has been coerced; the other says a democracy in which half the country stays at home represents nobody. Both sides accept this framing and neither is persuaded by it, which is usually a sign that the framing is wrong.
The objection from freedom is serious. A vote extracted under threat of a penalty is not obviously consent, and a state that can compel an appearance at the ballot box has claimed a power it will find other uses for. Compulsion also produces votes cast at random by people who resent being there, and a random vote is not participation in any sense worth the word.
The case on the other side is not about turnout figures either. Where voting is voluntary, turnout does not fall evenly: it falls fastest among the poorest, the youngest and the most recently arrived, so a voluntary system quietly reweights the electorate towards those with least to gain from change. That is a defect nobody chose.
So it is not the obligation that divides these two positions. What divides them is a disagreement about what low turnout is evidence of. One side reads it as a preference: people who do not vote have decided not to, and a decision deserves respect. The other reads it as an obstacle: those who do not vote are, on the whole, the people for whom voting is hardest.
That is a question with an answer, which is why locating it is worth a paragraph. If low turnout were a preference, removing obstacles would change nothing. If it is an obstacle, postal ballots, weekend polling and automatic registration ought to move the figure — and they do, which tells against the first reading without settling the second.
Which leaves a conditional position rather than a comfortable one. What I would argue for is removing the obstacles first and asking about compulsion afterwards, when we would know what we were compelling people to do.
Four questions about the model.
1. What does paragraph one do that a conventional introduction does not?
2. Why is paragraph two written at full strength when the writer does not hold that position?
3. Find the two clefts in paragraph four. What are they doing?
4. How many intensifiers does the whole essay use?
Repair a weaker one
The five moves: name the usual framing and reject it · the strongest version of the side you will not take · the strongest version of the side you will · the cleft that locates the real disagreement · what would settle it, and the conditional position that follows.
Below, a second essay on a different question, with four sentences removed.
Four sentences have been removed. Put each one back where it belongs.
Every year the same argument is had about university admissions, and every year it is had in the same terms: fairness against standards. [1]
The case for reading exam results and nothing else is that a mark is a mark. It cannot be charmed, it cannot be lobbied, and it does not care who your parents are. [2] A pupil taught by four supply teachers in two years did not sit the same exam as one who was not, whatever the paper says.
[3] It is a disagreement about what a mark measures. If a mark measures attainment, the fairest thing anybody can do is read it as it stands; if it measures attainment plus circumstances, then reading it as it stands imports the circumstances into the decision without admitting to it.
That is a question about evidence rather than about values, and it has been looked at. [4]
None of which tells an admissions tutor what to do with one application on one morning. It does tell them which argument they are actually having, which is more than they usually know.
Turning volume into structure
Rewrite each line for an argumentative essay. Keep the position; lose the volume. The words in the avoid list must not appear.
Inflated → argumentative essay
Honestly, it is totally obvious that this is a really bad idea and everyone knows it.
Spoken → argumentative essay
Loads of people don’t vote because they just don’t care about politics at all.
Inflated → argumentative essay
In my opinion governments should definitely absolutely do something about this problem.
Inflated → argumentative essay
The other side’s argument is just completely wrong and makes no sense whatsoever.
Inflated → argumentative essay
This is a super important issue which affects absolutely everybody in society today.
Spoken → argumentative essay
At the end of the day I reckon compulsory voting is a really good thing on the whole.
Three questions.
1. Where does the cleft go in a 340-word essay, and how many times?
2. What must be on the page before the cleft is written?
3. How many intensifiers does this essay need?
The essay
How the twenty-three minutes run. Five to plan, fourteen to write, four to exchange. The plan is not optional: the cleft has to be written before the essay is, or it will not be earned.
Stage 1 · Alone · 5 minutes · The plan
Choose a question you have an actual view about: compulsory voting, cars in city centres, a four-day week, whether universities should look past exam results, whether under-sixteens should be kept off social media.
Five lines. The fourth is the one the essay is built around.
- 1 · The usual framing, in one sentence — X against Y.
- 2 · The strongest version of the side you will not take. Full strength, no hedging.
- 3 · The strongest version of the side you will.
- 4 · The cleft: It is not ___ that divides these positions; what divides them is ___.
- 5 · What evidence would settle it, and which way the evidence you know of points.
Stage 2 · Alone · 14 minutes · Write
Three hundred and forty words, six paragraphs, one per move plus the conditional close.
Fourteen minutes. Banned throughout: really · very · totally · absolutely · completely · definitely · obviously · nowadays · in my opinion · at the end of the day.
- Paragraph 1: the framing, and the sentence that rejects it.
- Paragraphs 2 and 3: the two cases, the one you disagree with first and at full strength.
- Paragraph 4: the cleft from your plan, with the rival visible in the paragraph itself.
- Paragraph 5: what would settle it. Paragraph 6: the conditional position that follows — three or four lines, no summary of what you have just said.
- No invented statistics. A claim you can defend beats a number you cannot source.
Stage 3 · Pairs · 4 minutes · Exchange
Swap essays. Two jobs, in this order, and neither of them is proofreading.
Four minutes. Circle, then locate.
- Circle every intensifier and every empty opener that survived. Count them aloud.
- Read only paragraph 4 and say, without asking, what the disagreement is not about. If you cannot, the cleft was unearned and the writer knows what to fix.
- Say which of the two cases is written more strongly. If it is the writer’s own, paragraph 2 needs another minute.
What your partner found
Two questions.
1. Could your partner name the rival from paragraph 4 alone?
2. Which of your two cases came out stronger on the page?
One expensive sentence
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. What is the fourth paragraph of this essay for?
2. What replaces the intensifiers you deleted?
Next. The unit task: a written case and a spoken one, judged by whether anybody in the room can say what you and your opponent actually disagree about.