Five passages. Ten minutes each. One sentence at a time.
Each passage below is exam-length and unseen. Set a real ten-minute timer, write your one sentence of 5 to 75 words, run the checklist, and only then reveal the model. The models are sentences I wrote under the same rules, with the joins each one uses named, so you can see the machinery, not just the answer.
How to use this page. One passage per sitting beats five in a row, and the timer is not optional: an untimed summary measures your English, a timed one measures your score. If you have not read the rules and the three legal joins, start with the Summarize Written Text guide (Pearson's spelling of the task name; the rest of this site uses British -ise); every model below is built from exactly those three joins and nothing else. For an instant second opinion on a summary you have written, the writing checker marks it against the four traits.
The heat that cities make
Cities are consistently warmer than the countryside around them, a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect. Asphalt and concrete absorb solar radiation through the day and release it slowly through the night, while the engines, air conditioners and crowded buildings of a dense city add heat of their own. The difference is not trivial: on calm summer nights, a large city can run several degrees warmer than nearby rural land.
The effect is not felt equally. Districts with little tree cover, typically poorer ones, heat up most, and the health burden of heatwaves lands hardest there. Yet the research also points to remedies that are neither exotic nor expensive. Street trees, reflective roofing and small parks measurably cool their surroundings, and cities that have invested in them have blunted the worst of recent heatwaves. The urban heat island is, in that sense, unusual among climate problems: local in cause, local in cure.
Before you reveal: one sentence · one full stop, at the very end · 5–75 words · cursor on every comma · count the words
Reveal a model I wrote
Although cities run several degrees warmer than surrounding countryside because their surfaces store heat and their activity adds more, the effect falls unevenly on districts with little tree cover, and measures such as street trees and reflective roofing offer a local, affordable cure.
43 words. Joins used: one subordinator (although), one comma plus coordinator (and).
Content keeps the claim, the inequality concession and the remedy. The examples of engines and air conditioners are detail, and detail is what the 75-word limit exists to squeeze out.
Two languages, one ageing brain
For much of the twentieth century, raising children with two languages was widely believed to confuse them. That worry has not survived the evidence. Bilingual speakers show no lasting disadvantage in either language, and researchers have instead turned to a more interesting question: whether managing two languages trains the brain in ways that matter later in life.
The strongest findings concern ageing. Several large studies report that lifelong bilinguals develop the symptoms of dementia years later, on average, than comparable monolinguals, an effect attributed to the constant, silent work of selecting one language and suppressing the other. The claim is not uncontested; some studies find weaker effects once education and migration history are controlled. But the broad picture, of bilingualism as exercise rather than burden, now commands wide support.
Before you reveal: one sentence · one full stop, at the very end · 5–75 words · cursor on every comma · count the words
Reveal a model I wrote
Contrary to the old belief that two languages confuse children, research now suggests that lifelong bilingualism acts as exercise for the brain, and although some studies report weaker effects, bilinguals on average develop dementia symptoms years later than monolinguals.
39 words. Joins used: one subordinator (although), one comma plus coordinator (and).
The pivotal contrast is the old belief against the new evidence, so the sentence opens with it. The dementia delay is the argument; the education caveat earns its clause because the passage grants it.
The tide as a power station
Of all renewable energy sources, the tide is the most predictable. Wind stalls and sunshine fails, but the gravitational pull of the moon keeps its timetable for centuries, and engineers can state decades in advance how much energy a given stretch of water will offer on a given afternoon. Tidal generation, which places turbines in the strong currents of estuaries and straits, therefore fills a gap that other renewables cannot.
What has held it back is cost. Salt water is a brutal working environment, marine construction is expensive, and suitable sites, where the tide runs hard through a narrow channel, are not common. Early projects have consequently produced electricity at prices well above wind and solar. Advocates answer that predictability deserves a premium, because a grid built on variable sources needs at least one supply it can set a clock by.
Before you reveal: one sentence · one full stop, at the very end · 5–75 words · cursor on every comma · count the words
Reveal a model I wrote
Tidal power, which is uniquely predictable among renewables because the moon keeps its timetable, has been held back by harsh marine conditions, high construction costs and scarce sites, yet advocates argue that a grid built on variable sources should pay a premium for a supply it can rely on.
49 words. Joins used: one relative clause (which), one subordinator (because), one comma plus coordinator (yet).
All three joins in one legal sentence. Notice the list of three costs stays inside one clause; a list is not a join and costs nothing.
When more choice means less choosing
Classical economics treats choice as an unqualified good: the more options a buyer has, the better their eventual match should be. A well-known strand of consumer research complicates this. In a famous field experiment, shoppers offered a display of twenty-four jams stopped more often, but bought far less, than shoppers offered six. Abundance attracted attention and then paralysed it.
The finding, popularised as the paradox of choice, has limits. Later reviews found the effect inconsistent, strongest when options are hard to compare and buyers are unsure what they want. Where people know their criteria, large ranges do no harm. The practical lesson for retailers and policymakers is therefore not that choice is bad, but that unstructured choice is: menus, defaults and clear categories restore the benefits abundance promises.
Before you reveal: one sentence · one full stop, at the very end · 5–75 words · cursor on every comma · count the words
Reveal a model I wrote
Although research popularised as the paradox of choice found that shoppers offered many options engaged more but bought less, later reviews showed the effect is strongest only when options are hard to compare, so the practical lesson is that unstructured choice, not choice itself, is the problem.
47 words. Joins used: one subordinator (although), one comma plus coordinator (so).
The concession is half the passage, so it earns half the sentence. A summary that says only choice paralyses buyers would misstate the argument and lose Content.
The dance that gives directions
A honeybee returning from a rich source of nectar does something unique in the animal world: it tells its nest-mates where to go. The returning forager performs a figure-of-eight movement, the waggle dance, on the vertical comb. The angle of the dance relative to gravity encodes the direction of the food relative to the sun, and the duration of the central waggle encodes the distance.
Decoding this took decades and earned Karl von Frisch a Nobel Prize, partly because the claim seemed extravagant: symbolic communication in an insect. Sceptics argued that scent alone guided the bees, and the debate ran until experiments with robotic dancers, which sent bees to places no real forager had visited, settled it. The dance is real language of a kind, and a reminder that complex communication does not require a large brain.
Before you reveal: one sentence · one full stop, at the very end · 5–75 words · cursor on every comma · count the words
Reveal a model I wrote
The honeybee waggle dance, whose angle encodes direction and duration encodes distance, was doubted as symbolic communication in an insect until robotic-dancer experiments sent bees to unvisited places, proving that complex communication does not require a large brain.
38 words. Joins used: one relative clause (whose), one subordinator (until).
The passage is a claim, a doubt and a resolution; the sentence walks the same route in order. Names and prizes are detail the word count cannot afford.
Five sentences in, you will know your habit.
Most candidates discover the same fault recurring in all five: the join they overuse, the detail they cannot let go, or the count they never ran.
When you can name your recurring fault, it is drillable. In a lesson I mark your summaries against the four traits, name the fault precisely, and build the repair into your next five. Lessons are £20 for fifty minutes, one to one, in proper British English; the first step is a discounted trial lesson.