Planning and structuring an argument

Spend about 5 minutes planning:

1. Decide your view: for, against, or a balanced view that still reaches a firm conclusion.
2. List four or five reasons, then put them in order, saving the strongest until last.
3. Note a counter-argument and your answer to it.
4. Plan a striking opening and a powerful ending.

Link your paragraphs with discourse markers, such as ‘Furthermore’, ‘However’ and ‘Above all’, so the argument flows.

‘Teenagers should not have part-time jobs during term time: school must come first.’ Write an article for a broadsheet newspaper in which you argue for or against this statement.

Picture a fifteen-year-old on a Saturday morning. In one version, she is asleep until noon. In the other, she is serving coffee, solving problems and earning her own money. Which of them is learning more about life?

The claim that teenagers should not work during term time sounds sensible, even responsible. It is also wrong. A few hours of paid work a week does not compete with school; it completes it.

The opening uses an image, a rhetorical question and a clear thesis.

Of course school matters, and no job should be allowed to crowd out learning. But we cannot keep young people wrapped in cotton wool until the day they turn eighteen, and then expect them to cope with the world. Trust them with a little responsibility now, and they will repay it. Let them work.

The conclusion admits the other side, rebuts it, and ends with a short, memorable command.