Choosing and Deploying Examples

The load-bearing test

Before an example goes in, ask one question: would the point be weaker if I removed it? If the answer is no, the example is decoration and belongs in the middle band at best. If removing it would collapse the paragraph into bare assertion, the example is load-bearing, and load-bearing evidence is what the top band is built from.

Decoration is the commonest way a knowledgeable student underperforms. They know a great deal and name a great deal, and the marker reads a tour of current affairs rather than an argument. The fix is not fewer facts but more weight on each: every example should be doing a specific job in the sentence around it, or it should not be there.

Specific and current beats stock and famous

Markers read hundreds of scripts, and the same handful of stock names appear in most of them. A roll-call of the usual famous figures does less work, not because the names are wrong, but because they show less independent thought, and examiners note that the standard catalogue struggles to reach the top range. Reach instead for a named policy, a dated episode, a specific institution.

Currency matters as much as specificity. A society changes fast, and an example that was accurate five years ago may have been overtaken. A precise, recent, correctly stated case is worth more than a dramatic one you half-remember, because the marker can trust it, and trust is part of what earns the marks. When you can, prefer the current and concrete: a renewable-cost collapse and the United Kingdom closing its last coal plant in 2024 carries more than a vague gesture at 'green energy'.

Make the example argue, not just appear

Dropping a name into a paragraph is not the same as using it. The move is to show the mechanism the example demonstrates. Do not write that a contact-tracing programme 'shows data can be useful'. Write what the data actually did: proximity records let tracers reconstruct who was exposed to whom in hours rather than days, so clusters could be isolated before they spread, a collective benefit no individual acting alone could produce.

That is the difference between a label and an argument. The marker should be able to see, from your sentences alone, exactly how the example supports the claim. If they have to take your word that it is relevant, the example is not yet doing its job. Spell out the link every time, even when it feels obvious to you.

The weak version asserts relevance. The strong version explains the mechanism and uses one case to weigh both sides. Verified as_of 2026-06: TraceTogether's contact-tracing role and the 2021 law restricting police access to the data are documented.

Range beats repetition

Even apt examples lose marks when they cluster. An essay whose every illustration traces back to one event or one country draws a deduction for narrow scope, because the marker is crediting range as well as aptness. If three of your paragraphs lean on the same crisis, replace one with a case from a different region or domain that makes the same analytical point.

Over-reliance on a single society is the most common version of this. Local examples are powerful when the question says 'your society', but an essay that can only see one country looks parochial on a universal question. Pair the local case with a global one that shows the same mechanism elsewhere, and the argument reads as a pattern rather than a single data point.

Singapore examples, currency, and never inventing a figure

For 'your society' questions the bar is higher than naming a policy: the example must explain why the society is a particular case, drawing on its real structural features rather than just asserting that something happens there. A small, trade-dependent, densely urban, multi-ethnic state managed by a high-capacity government is a specific kind of place, and a good local example uses that specificity.

One discipline overrides all of this: never invent a statistic to make an example look authoritative. A single fabricated figure invites the marker to doubt everything around it. If you are unsure of a number, write the point so it does not depend on the number, or use a verified case instead. A correctly stated qualitative example beats a dramatic figure you cannot stand behind.