Question 3: Finding Evidence With No Sources

This essay gives you a prompt and no sources, so every example has to come from what you actually know: things you have read, watched, studied, or lived through. A personal anecdote often beats a famous historical case for a simple reason: you know how it works. You can say what happened step by step, who did what, and why it led where it did. A half-remembered fact about, say, the Berlin Wall gives you a label but not a mechanism. Specificity beats prestige every time a reason needs showing, not just naming.

To test an example, go back to the reason it's parked under and ask what that reason actually claims. If your reason is 'shared spaces build trust between strangers,' an example about a town raising money for a new roof only counts if you can show strangers trusting each other, not just a town spending money. Many drafts fail here: the example is real and detailed, but it proves a neighboring point instead of the one it's sitting under. Fix this before you draft the paragraph, not after.

Building the paragraph means stating the reason, introducing the example with enough concrete detail to make it recognizable, then spending at least a sentence or two explaining the link: what the example shows, and why that counts as proof of the reason. This is what the commentary row rewards, and it's also why two fully explained examples beat five bare ones. A list of names gives the appearance of proof without the substance. The same habit of testing and explaining carries into the other two essays, where evidence from a passage or a set of sources needs the identical check.