'More collaboration, less competition is the need of the hour.' Express your views either for or against this statement.

MODEL ANSWER (approximately 340 words) — arguing FOR the statement

Every problem that now threatens us is too large for anyone to solve alone. That single fact is why collaboration, and not competition, is the need of the hour.

Consider how the COVID-19 vaccines were produced. Laboratories in a dozen countries published their genetic sequencing openly within weeks, and what would ordinarily have taken a decade took eleven months. Had each institution guarded its findings in the hope of winning the race, the race itself would have been lost. The same is true of climate change: no nation can lower the temperature of a planet by acting alone, however virtuously.

Competition is also a poor teacher. In a classroom organised around rank, a student learns to hope quietly that her friend does badly. That is not ambition; it is a corrosion of character, and it persists long after the marks are forgotten. Where students work in teams, the stronger explain and so understand better, and the weaker are carried rather than shamed. The research on peer learning is consistent on this point.

It is objected that competition drives excellence — that without rivals we would grow complacent. There is something in this, and the honest answer is that the two are not opposites. Scientists compete for recognition while sharing their data; athletes train together and race apart. What is being argued against is not effort but the belief that another’s success must come at my expense.

That belief is the real damage. It produces workplaces where information is hoarded, nations that will not share technology, and children who are anxious at thirteen. A society can survive a shortage of winners. It cannot survive a shortage of trust.

The need of the hour, then, is not to abolish competition but to demote it — to make co-operation the default and rivalry the exception. The problems we have built are collective. The solutions will have to be collective too.

HOW AN ARGUMENTATIVE COMPOSITION EARNS ITS MARKS

The instruction is "either FOR or AGAINST" — so take ONE side and hold it. A composition that argues both ways equally has not answered the question and loses content marks. State your position in the opening paragraph.

The structure that scores:

1. Opening — state your stand clearly in one or two sentences.
2. Three body paragraphs — one argument each, and each supported by a concrete EXAMPLE. Unsupported assertion is the commonest weakness in this type; naming the vaccine effort or climate negotiations is what separates a strong answer from a vague one.
3. The counter-argument — acknowledge the strongest point on the other side and answer it. Examiners specifically reward this, because it shows you have thought rather than recited.
4. Conclusion — restate the position in different words, not the same ones.

Register matters here: formal, impersonal, no slang, no rhetorical questions piled up. Discourse markers (however, consequently, it is objected that) carry expression marks.

FORMAT AND MARKS DIVISION: see "Composition — grade bands and marking" in the Writing Formats & Marking (Reference) chapter, along with the worked model for this composition type.

USE THIS AS A MODEL, NOT AS AN ANSWER TO MEMORISE. The question asks for an ORIGINAL composition, and every year examiners identify scripts reproduced from guide books; a memorised answer can be penalised for plagiarism and will in any case read as borrowed. Study this piece for its STRUCTURE — how it opens, how the paragraphs are ordered, where the required tasks are answered, how it ends — and then write your own, about your own school, your own family, your own town. Your own specific detail is worth more marks than anyone else’s polished sentence.