In this week’s post, you can find a new Paper 2 exemplar here.  What’s interesting about this one is that the student still does quite well using an A, A, B, B structure.  It goes to show there isn’t one right way to write a Paper 2!  But, as you read, you will also notice there is not nearly enough comparing and contrasting happening and that affects their scores in criterion A and B respectively.  

Students will ask us all the time how they should structure or organize their Paper 2 response.  They are looking for one single answer.  But that doesn’t exist.  We know that argument often comes before structure.  What is it you want to argue?  And then how are you going to argue it?  This tends to be a better fit than using a pre-decided structure and plugging and argument into it.  That’s not to say that having some idea of the plusses and minuses of various approaches isn’t needed.  It’s helpful to know the pitfalls and the potential bonuses of various ways of organizing an argument.  We don’t want to pigeon hole a student either.   

As such, we’ve published some pages on helping students compare and contrast here and here and here and here.  There should be something for everyone in one of these pages!

Best,

Tim and David