Seventy minutes, one idea

Word	What it means
Topic	The subject the assignment gives you. Your writing must clearly connect to it.
Narrative	A story, true or invented, in which something happens and something changes.
Essay	Writing that states an idea about the topic and supports it with reasons and examples.
Controlling idea	The one thing your whole piece says about the topic. An essay states it; a narrative shows it.
Content	The scoring category for what you say: ideas, purpose, details. Worth double.
Organization	The scoring category for how it holds together: opening, order, transitions, ending. Worth double.
Sentence Structure, Vocabulary, Conventions	The other three categories: sentence control and variety, word choice, and correctness.
Excellent to Poor	The five levels each category is scored at: Excellent, Proficient, Satisfactory, Limited, Poor.
Transition	A word, phrase or sentence that links one idea or event to the next: however, by the next morning.
Closure	An ending that connects back to your focus rather than simply stopping.
Comma splice	Two complete sentences joined with only a comma.

What you have. About 70 minutes and 500 to 1000 words are suggested. The test opens with ten minutes when you may talk both assignments over in a group of two to four, or think alone, and make notes in the planning space. Use them to find your idea, not your first sentence.

1. Mark the key words in the topic. Everything must connect to them.
2. Write one sentence saying what you actually think about it. That is your controlling idea.
3. Choose material: one memory or invented situation for a narrative; two or three examples for an essay.
4. Then choose the form, and sketch the shape in four to six lines.

Worked example. Say the topic were learning something the hard way. “Learning is important” is true and leaves nothing to say next. “The lessons that stay with us are usually the ones that cost us something” gives you a question to explore: cost what, and why does the cost make it stay?

What Content rewards: how you explore the topic, a deliberate purpose, carefully chosen ideas and precise details. A predictable idea with general details lands in the middle. A specific idea backed by details nobody else would think of lands at the top.

	Essay	Narrative
The idea	Stated in the introduction	Shown through what changes
New paragraph for	Each reason or example	A new scene, time or speaker
Best details	Specific examples, explained	Actions, dialogue, senses
Ending	Returns to the idea with something added	Shows the change without explaining it

One topic, both ways. An essay could take three examples — a burned first batch of bannock, a friendship damaged by a careless word, an ankle sprained by skipping warm-ups — and show what each cost and why it stuck. A narrative could follow one character who borrows a friend's bike without asking and has it stolen. Either can score Excellent; pick the one whose shape you can hold for seventy minutes.

• Weak essay opening: “In this essay I will talk about learning things the hard way.”
• Revised: “Nobody forgets the recipe they ruined. Most lessons worth keeping work the same way: they stay because they cost us something.”
• Weak narrative opening: “One day I woke up and got ready for school.”
• Revised: “The bike was gone. The lock was still on the rack, cut clean through.” The story starts where the problem starts.

Transitions can be explicit — however, for example, by the next morning — or implicit: a word or idea from the end of one paragraph picked up at the start of the next. Transitions that only count off — firstly, secondly, thirdly — are the kind the scoring guide calls mechanical.

Endings. The guide describes a closure that is “mechanical and/or moralistic” as Satisfactory — acceptable, not strong. “And that is how I learned never to borrow without asking” is a moral stuck on the end. Compare: “I paid Sam back with lawn-mowing money by August. It was October before he asked me to ride with him again.” The reader sees the lesson — trust is slower to fix than a bike — without being told.

I went to the park. It was cold. I saw my friend. He was sad. I asked him what was wrong, he didn't answer.

The park was nearly empty in the cold. By the swings I found Theo, hunched inside his jacket, staring at nothing. When I asked what was wrong, he didn't answer.

• Sentence Structure: five sentences starting I, It or He, all one length, become three that begin differently and vary in length. The comma splice at the end is fixed with When.
• Vocabulary: hunched and staring at nothing show that Theo is sad instead of saying it.
• Conventions: spelling, punctuation, and a new paragraph each time a new person speaks.

You may use a dictionary and a thesaurus, and the digital test has spelling and grammar tools on. None of them reliably catches their for there or a comma splice, so save five minutes to reread.

• Writing about something next to the topic instead of the topic.
• Starting before you know your one idea, so the piece drifts.
• A narrative where nothing changes, or one that ends by stating a moral.
• An essay that lists examples without saying how each connects to the idea.
• No time left to proofread.