Last check, at speed
Eight openings. Match each to what it puts in focus.
What is being assessed
One question, and four things underneath it
The assessment for this unit reduces to a single test, and it is not a test of fluency. After your debate, somebody who was listening will be asked to say what the two sides were not arguing about. If they can, the unit has done its job. If they cannot — if the two positions simply went past each other for sixteen minutes — then no amount of accurate grammar rescues it.
Underneath that sit four things that are being watched. Location: at least once, each side names where the disagreement actually is, and does it in a cleft. Cost: every cleft has a rival the listener can find, and no sentence is carrying stacked intensifiers instead. Sound: the clefted element takes the stress and the rest of the sentence stays flat, because the rest of the sentence is old news.
And concession, which is the one people skip. A rebuttal that begins by giving something away is heard as confident. A rebuttal that gives nothing away is heard as a person who has not listened, and it does not matter how good the argument inside it is.
The five errors from Lesson 6 are also being counted, and they are cheap to avoid: when for that, the gap filled twice, agreement with the dummy it, a subject reopened after was, and the cleft with nothing to contrast against.
Three questions.
1. What is the single overarching test?
2. Why does a rebuttal begin with a concession?
3. What makes a cleft count in the assessment?
The whole unit on one card
Everything from Unit 29, in the order you will need it
| Move | Frame | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Concede | It is not the evidence I dispute — the trials found what they say they found. | Concede something real. A concession nobody wanted is not a concession. |
| Locate | What I dispute is what the numbers are of. | This is the sentence the whole unit is for. One per side, minimum. |
| Focus a person, thing, time or reason | It was the deposit that decided it, not the rent. | that or who, never when; agreement follows the clefted noun. |
| Focus an action or a proposition | What they did was withdraw it. What worries me is the precedent. | No second subject after was; no pronoun refilling the gap. |
| Say it aloud | It was the DEPOSIT that decided it. | Stress the clefted element; everything after it drops. Stress the tail and the construction is undone. |
| Delete | really · very · totally · absolutely · definitely · obviously | Cheap marking is discounted. Four of them read as anxiety, not emphasis. |
Four questions. Fast.
1. It was in April ___ the rules changed.
2. What they did was ___ the offer.
3. It is the tenants who ___ paying for it.
4. You want to cleft a sentence but cannot name the rival. What do you do?
The unit task
How the thirty minutes run. Six alone on the position sheet, sixteen in fours for the assessed debate, eight to finish the essay and record the closing case. Two portfolio pieces come out of this hour: the essay from Lesson 7, finished, and ninety seconds of recorded speech.
Stage 1 · Alone · 6 minutes · Position sheet
Take a side on the question your four has agreed. Anything with two defensible positions will do: compulsory voting, a four-day week, cars in city centres, admissions beyond exam results, an age floor for social media.
Six lines, and line five is the one that will be assessed.
- 1–3 · Three claims, one sentence each, with the evidence named. No figures you cannot defend.
- 4 · The strongest objection to your own case, written at full strength.
- 5 · The cleft: It is not ___ that divides us; what divides us is ___. Both blanks filled before the debate starts.
- 6 · What would change your mind. Written now, so that it cannot be invented later.
Stage 2 · Fours · 16 minutes · The assessed debate
Two a side. Openings, rebuttals, responses, and then the part that decides it.
Two minutes per side for openings and rebuttals, one for responses, four for the closing exchange.
- Openings (2 min each side): the three claims, evidence named, no intensifiers.
- Rebuttals (2 min each side): begin with a real concession, then the cleft from line 5.
- Responses (1 min each side): answer the located disagreement, not the opening case.
- Closing (2 min each side): state the other side’s position in one sentence they would accept — then say, in one more, why you still hold yours.
- Anybody may call "where is the disagreement?" once. It is answered in a single sentence or the point is conceded.
Stage 3 · Pairs · 8 minutes · Essay and recording
The essay from Lesson 7 goes into the portfolio in this stage, and so does ninety seconds of you speaking.
Four minutes on the essay, four on the recording.
- Read your partner’s paragraph 4 aloud. If you cannot state what the disagreement is not about, hand it back — that is a two-line fix, not a rewrite.
- Delete any intensifier that survived the last lesson. Count them and write the number at the top; it is the most useful mark on the page.
- Record ninety seconds: your closing case, ending on the cleft. Play it back once and listen only for the stress — clefted element up, everything after it flat.
- If the tail of the cleft is stressed, record it once more. That single re-take is worth more than another written draft.
Where the unit landed
Four questions.
1. Could a listener say what your two sides were not arguing about?
2. What happened when a rebuttal began with a real concession?
3. How many of your clefts had a rival the other side could name?
4. On the recording, where did the stress fall?
The two-minute conversation worth having in your four. Ask each other one question: after sixteen minutes, is the disagreement in the same place it was at the start? If it moved, say where it moved to. If it did not move at all, that is worth knowing too — some disagreements really are about the thing they appear to be about, and finding that out took one sentence rather than an argument.
What you can do now
Three questions. Thirty seconds.
1. Why does written English emphasise with structure rather than with volume?
2. What does an it-cleft take, and a wh-cleft?
3. What is the first move of a good rebuttal?
Next unit — Routines, Habits, Patterns. This unit was about what a sentence puts in focus. The next one is about what a sentence quietly leaves out: we had the flat rewired, I got my passport renewed, she is having the whole thing redone. Somebody did the work and the grammar does not say who — which is convenient, occasionally evasive, and the single hardest construction to build from Portuguese, where mandar fazer does the job with one verb.