Introduction for all essay prompts:

Line 1: An impartial or neutral background statement that introduces the topic.

Line 2: Rewrite the prompt as a concession.

Line 3: Write a thesis statement that is a simple sentence with a compound verb and an opinion.

For example:

Prompt:

You will have 20 minutes to plan, write, and revise an essay about the topic below. Your response will be judged on how well you develop a position, organize your ideas, present supporting details, and control the elements of standard written English. You should write 200-300 words.

 

Some people think that placing advertisements in schools is a great resource for public schools that need additional funding, but others think it exploits children by treating them as a captive audience for corporate sponsors.

Choose which opinion you most agree with and discuss why you chose that position. Support your point of view with reasons and/or examples from your own experience or observations.

Line 1: The topic here is advertising. Once you know the topic you can clearly see that there are two sides to this prompt. The first that says, ‘advertising good’ and the second half that says ‘advertising bad’ – this is an easy way to understand your prompt – topic, good and bad points…these are usually, advantage/disadvantage essay types.

• Remember. One subject and a positive and negative statement comment about that subject usually always is an Advantage/ Disadvantage prompt.

Anyways, you must make an unbiased statement about advertising here. For example.

Line 1: Advertising seems to be inescapable these days; it can be found on my cellphone, television, and on most buildings.

• Note: do not ‘purple’ the topic by modifying it with an adjective, like. ‘Terrible advertising can be found everywhere these days’ – it must be an objective/neutral sentence about advertising.

Line 2: Should be written as a concession! What is a concession, you ask? A concession is a very old rhetorical form, which may extend back to Roman times where Cicero used it to argue with the senate. Simply put, it works like this. If I say something ‘nice’ about your point of view, you will more than likely listen to what I have to say. For our purposes on the PTE, we use a concessionary statement to show both sides of an argument just before your thesis statement. We do this because we have to ‘validate’ your thesis statement to ensure that you are not just making one up that is incorrect or misleading.

So, for the above prompt, a concession will look like this:

DC, IC–a dependent clause followed by an independent clause whereby the position you are not going to defend will be in the dependent clause, and the position you will support is in the independent clause.

Line 2: Although some schools use advertising to obtain extra funding, there are other schools that believe advertising takes advantage of children while they attend school.

Notice: The 1^st clause is an adverbial dependent clause that ‘concedes ground’; as we say. The 2^nd clause is an independent clause, the more important clause, which, in your conclusion, you will make a final comment about.

 

In the prompt above, a compound sentence joins two independent clauses with the coordinating conjunction ‘but’. The prompt tries to show that some people believe school ‘advertising is ok to get ‘extra money’ whereas other people (mentioned after ‘but’) believe that advertising takes advantage of children (exploits)because children must go to school (captive audience) in most countries.

So, you are to realize that your 1^st paragraph will be about ‘advertising is ok’ while your second paragraph will be about the negative effects of advertising in school.

An alternate way to rewrite the prompt, to help you see what it is saying, is to write each half of the prompt in a passive voice. The trick here is to move the object of the independent clauses into the subject position and then rewrite those parts of the sentence to have the same approximate meaning of the original prompt.

The same prompt in the passive voice:

Line 2: Additional funding is gained by some public schools by way of advertising; however, business advertising is frowned upon by other public schools because they believe that it takes advantage of children just because they must go to school.

For an understanding of the passive voice try Anglo-Link passive voice on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxbQ2U3Uuv0&t=575s

Note: ‘business advertising’ is synonymous with ‘corporate sponsors’ and ‘however’, a conjunctive adverb replaces ‘but’ as their function is the same.

 

Line 3 is the most important part of the ‘Introduction’ because it states your thesis, or what you will discuss in your body paragraphs [and your opinion]. Always write it in this form as a Simple Sentence with a compound verb (2 verbs):

This essay will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of advertising and explain why it should not be used in public schools.

The thesis (above) is written in the same form as this sentence: ‘He will eat pizza and drink cola.

Note: the simple future tense is used at the start of the essay–‘will discuss’ and ‘will explain’, but it is a bad form to repeat the auxiliary verb ‘will’ with the second verb (explain).

Important: following the verb ‘explain’ you create a noun clause that states your opinion. Do not give a reason just yet – just state in a clause: ‘it (advertising) should not be used in public schools.

In any event, the first three sentences for this prompt should read like this:

Line 1: Advertising seems to be everywhere these days; on my cellphone, television, and on most buildings.

Line 2: Although some schools use advertising to obtain extra funding, there are those that believe it takes advantage of children while they attend school.

Line 3: This essay will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of advertising and explain why it should not be used in public schools.

From this point on, the essay should be easy because the topic sentences are, for all practical concerns, are done for you – are opposites in an Advantage/Disadvantage prompt!