Structuring an Extended Written Response: Question 10
Syllabus W1, W2
A student has written a discursive essay in answer to the question: "Should the local council introduce a car-free day in the town centre once a month?" The essay's opening paragraph described a Saturday afternoon in the town centre, choked with slow-moving traffic and exhaust fumes drifting past outdoor café tables. The body paragraphs then argued that a monthly car-free day would improve air quality, encourage local trade by making the streets more pleasant to browse, and could be trialled cheaply using the road closures already set up for the town's annual summer festival.
Which sentence would work best as the concluding sentence of this essay? [1]
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Worked solution
Assessment focus
This tests whether a candidate can recognise an effective concluding sentence: one that draws the essay’s points together and states a clear final position, rather than merely announcing structure, generalising, or introducing an unresolved new idea.
Why B is correct
Option B synthesises two of the essay’s body points (air quality and local trade) and its opening image (the Saturday afternoon scene), then closes with a clear implied position in favour of the scheme, “offers a low-cost way” signals endorsement without repeating the opening or body paragraphs word for word.
Why the distractors are wrong
- A announces that the essay has discussed the question but takes no position and adds no synthesis, a description of the essay’s structure, not a conclusion to it.
- C is a generic statement about traffic congestion that could open or close an essay on almost any transport topic; it does not engage with this essay’s specific argument at all.
- D raises a new counter-argument in the final sentence with no response, leaving the essay’s case looking unresolved rather than settled.
Mark scheme
- 1 mark for selecting B.
- 0 marks for any other option. No partial credit, since this is a discrete single-answer selection question.