Structuring an Extended Written Response: Question 8
Syllabus W1, W2
A student is writing a report in answer to the question: "Should the council introduce a late-night bus service on Friday and Saturday nights?"
Below is one paragraph from their draft report. It is grammatically fluent, but it actually covers two distinct ideas fused together into a single paragraph.
"The council should introduce a late-night bus service running from the town centre to the outlying estates on Friday and Saturday nights. Many young people currently have no safe way to get home after nightclubs and bars close at two in the morning, and several parents have written to the council describing the cost and unreliability of booking a taxi at that hour. A part-time worker who finishes a late shift at the multiplex cinema has also raised the same concern, since the last regular bus leaves at eleven. Running the service would cost the council an estimated forty thousand pounds a year, largely because drivers must be paid a higher overnight rate. Ticket prices would likely need to be set slightly above the normal daytime fare to offset part of this cost. A neighbouring town that introduced a similar service reported that fare revenue covered around a third of the running costs within its first year."
(a) Identify the exact sentence where a new paragraph should begin, and explain the shift in idea it marks. [3]
(b) Rewrite the material above as two separate, complete paragraphs. Do not add new content or omit anything given. Each paragraph should open with a clear topic sentence appropriate to its own idea, and the second paragraph should begin with a discourse marker or a clear reference back to the first paragraph's idea, signalling the shift. [5]
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Worked solution
Assessment focus
This question tests a structuring skill distinct from sequencing separate notes: recognising when a single, fluently written paragraph actually fuses two ideas that belong in separate paragraphs, then dividing it correctly while preserving all of the original content and signalling the shift for the reader.
Part (a): Locating the split
The paragraph opens with a thesis-style sentence and then gives three sentences establishing the need for the service (the safety risk after clubs and bars close, parents’ complaints about taxi cost and reliability, and a shift worker’s matching concern), before pivoting without warning into three sentences about funding and running the service (its annual cost, ticket pricing, and a comparison town’s revenue). The pivot happens at “Running the service would cost the council an estimated forty thousand pounds a year…”. This is where a new paragraph should begin, since everything before it argues why the service matters and everything from this point on explains the practical cost of providing it.
Part (b): The model rewrite
Paragraph 1 (the need):
“The council should introduce a late-night bus service running from the town centre to the outlying estates on Friday and Saturday nights. Many young people currently have no safe way to get home after nightclubs and bars close at two in the morning, and several parents have written to the council describing the cost and unreliability of booking a taxi at that hour. A part-time worker who finishes a late shift at the multiplex cinema has also raised the same concern, since the last regular bus leaves at eleven.”
Paragraph 2 (funding and running the service):
“Meeting this need would not be free, however: running the service would cost the council an estimated forty thousand pounds a year, largely because drivers must be paid a higher overnight rate. Ticket prices would likely need to be set slightly above the normal daytime fare to offset part of this cost. A neighbouring town that introduced a similar service reported that fare revenue covered around a third of the running costs within its first year.”
The second paragraph opens with “Meeting this need would not be free, however”, a bridge that refers back to Paragraph 1’s argument (“this need”) while the discourse marker “however” signals the shift from making the case to weighing its cost, before the paragraph’s own topic sentence establishes the figure that the rest of the paragraph develops.
Common pitfalls specific to this task
- Splitting immediately after the first sentence, treating the opening thesis statement as a complete paragraph on its own rather than as the introduction to the “need” argument that follows it.
- Leaving the ticket-pricing sentence attached to the first paragraph because it still mentions cost to residents, rather than recognising it belongs with the funding/running-cost material.
- Starting the second paragraph with no linking device at all (“Running the service would cost…”), which is grammatically acceptable but loses the mark reserved for an explicit, signalled transition.