The five-paragraph plan in the table is the whole assignment. Notice what makes it different from a school essay you may have written before: it demands a counterargument. An essay that only agrees with its quotation cannot score full marks here, however well written.
- Paragraph 1: the quotation in quotation marks, the speaker named, one line on why it appealed to you, and one line stating what the essay will argue.
- Paragraphs 2 and 3: one idea each. Start with a topic sentence, then prove it — an example, an incident or a piece of evidence. Two developed points beat four undeveloped ones.
- Paragraph 4: state the strongest objection fairly, then answer it. A weak objection set up only to be knocked down is a wasted paragraph.
- Paragraph 5: gather the points and end on a line worth remembering — often a return to the quotation, seen differently now.
- Transitions: use the connectives given — In addition to…, For instance…, However…, Consequently…, Finally…
- Length: about 250–300 words. Keep sentences short; this chapter is about not using more words than you need.
Sample answer (on Emily Dickinson’s “Saying nothing... sometimes says the most”):
The Weight of What Is Not Said
“Saying nothing... sometimes says the most,” wrote Emily Dickinson. The line stayed with me because it takes something we all treat as an absence — silence — and calls it a form of speech. This essay argues that silence communicates, and that learning when to be silent is as much a language skill as learning what to say.
Silence carries meaning because it is always read in a context. When a friend is grieving, no arrangement of words will explain away her loss, and every attempt sounds like a performance; sitting beside her says the one thing that is true — I am here. For instance, in the chapter we have just read, Khetaram delivers news of a death by standing outside the house, reading the letter twice and then saying nothing more. His silence is not emptiness; it is respect that words would have spoiled.
In addition to comforting, silence can judge. A pause before an answer tells everyone that the question was a poor one. A class that goes quiet when a boy is mocked has said something about itself. Charles Swain reaches the same conclusion from the opposite direction in his poem Words: “hosts of words” reach the head “But never touch the heart”, while the voice that truly cheers “Hath oft the fewest words to say”. Consequently, restraint is not weakness in a speaker; it is the condition under which the few words spoken carry weight.
However, the quotation can be criticised, and the criticism deserves an answer. Martin Luther King, Jr. warned that “we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends” — silence in the face of injustice is cowardice, not eloquence. The objection is a serious one, but it does not defeat Dickinson, because she wrote sometimes. Her claim is not that silence always speaks; it is that it can. The silence that says the most is the silence of someone who could speak and chooses restraint out of respect. The silence King condemns is the silence of someone who should speak and chooses safety. The word ‘sometimes’ separates them.
Finally, then: silence communicates comfort, judgement and restraint, and it fails only when it is used to hide. Dickinson’s line is not advice to say nothing. It is a warning that we are being read even when we are not talking — and that the one who has learnt when to stop is heard longest.