You don’t have to say everything
Leandro Zuanazzi
2 min read
Last week, one of my students told me about a difficulty she had encountered while planning a Cambridge essay she had written for homework.
"Planning essays can be difficult depending on the topic," she said. "For this one, I don't really agree or disagree."
I suspect many students preparing for Cambridge exams have experienced something similar.
Sometimes our ideas don’t fit neatly into one side of an argument. Our opinions are more nuanced. We can see strengths and weaknesses in different perspectives, and choosing one position over another can feel uncomfortable.
When that happens, I usually offer the following advice:
In the exam, be strategic. Choose the position you can support most effectively and commit to it.
At first glance, that advice may sound as though I’m encouraging students to oversimplify their thinking.
I’m not.
What I’m really encouraging them to do is recognise an important characteristic of writing: No single text can say everything there is to say about a topic.
Every piece of writing involves selection: we decide which ideas deserve more space, which examples strengthen our argument, and which points we can leave for another time.
Those decisions are part of the craft of writing.
One of the books that has influenced the way I think about writing is They Say / I Say by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. One of its central ideas is that writing is a way of entering an ongoing conversation.
People have already said something about the topic before we arrive.
What do we do? We listen. We consider different perspectives. Then we make our own contribution.
Our essay is not the final word on the subject — neither is anyone else’s. The conversation continues after our text has been read.
I find this perspective particularly helpful when preparing students for Cambridge writing tasks.
It’s a reminder that our goal isn’t to produce the definitive essay on a complex issue. That would be impossible, especially under exam conditions.
Instead, we aim to make a thoughtful, well-supported contribution within the space we’ve been given.
Ironically, recognising that we can’t say everything often makes planning easier.
Instead of asking: “How can I include all my ideas?”
We can ask: “Which contribution can I make most effectively in this essay?”
I think that’s a much more helpful question.