Essay technique
Planning the Argument: Five Distinct Points
LNAT Section B · Technique guide
The question this answers
This is a technique guide, not a single prompt. It teaches how to plan, structure and time an LNAT Section B essay using the "five distinct points" method, and it works the method on a running example prompt: should a university education be free at the point of use, paid for by the taxpayer rather than the student?
The stance
There is no single correct stance for a technique guide; the skill is to pick one stance early, defend it with five non-overlapping points, steel-man the other side, and never sit on the fence. On the worked example below the demonstrated stance is qualified: tuition should not be entirely free, but a fairer income-contingent system, fully free for the worst-off, is the position a strong applicant can actually defend in 40 minutes.
The case for
Paraphrase the prompt and expose its buried assumption before writing a word, so that you argue about the real question rather than the words on the page.
Spend sixty seconds rewriting the prompt in your own words and asking what it quietly takes for granted. A 'should' question assumes the action is possible and coherent, not that it is currently absent, so 'should university be free?' is not asking whether it is free now but whether the taxpayer should bear the cost instead of the graduate. Spotting that the prompt smuggles in a false binary, or a contested definition (what counts as 'free' when graduates pay through later taxes?), lets you reframe the debate on your own terms. Examiners reward the candidate who interrogates the question, because that is the move a lawyer makes with a statute or a contract clause.
The case against
Over-planning eats the clock: a candidate who spends fifteen of forty minutes mapping axes may run out of time to write.
The objection to a rigid five-point method is that planning can become procrastination. In a 40-minute paper the plan should take about five minutes, not fifteen, and it should be skeletal: a one-line thesis, five three-word point labels and one evidence cue each. The risk is real, which is why the technique insists the plan is lightweight scaffolding, not a second essay. Discipline on timing matters as much as the structure itself.
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