TOEIC Link Writing Existential-There and Subject-Fronting: Choosing Where to Introduce New Information

Every sentence has to decide how it introduces the reader to new information, and one of the smallest-looking decisions carries more weight than it appears to. "There are three issues with the proposal" and "Three issues affect the proposal" report the same fact, but they package it differently. The first uses existential-there to present the issues as something new arriving on the page; the second treats "three issues" as an established subject that then does something. In TOEIC Link Writing, choosing the right packaging for each sentence is part of what makes a response read as controlled rather than assembled at random, and choosing the wrong one is a quiet source of padding and flatness that a scorer registers even without naming it.

The difficulty is that both structures are grammatical, so neither ever gets flagged as an error. A writer can lean on existential-there for every sentence and never trigger a correction, yet produce prose that feels wordy and slow because every clause opens with the same low-content "There is / There are." The skill is not knowing the construction — most writers use it fluently — but knowing when it earns its place and when fronting the real subject would be tighter and clearer.

This article is the information-packaging discipline for existential-there in TOEIC Link Writing. The guide covers what existential-there actually does to the flow of information, when fronting the subject reads better than presenting it, the traps that make existential-there feel like padding, and the packaging check that keeps every sentence opening earning its structure.

What existential-there actually does

Existential-there is a presentational device: it announces that something exists or is present before naming what it is. "There is a problem" holds the subject slot with the empty word "there" so that the real, informative subject — "a problem" — can arrive after the verb, in the position the reader treats as new.

Its job is to introduce new referents into the discourse. English tends to put known information near the front of a sentence and new information toward the end. Existential-there exploits this by keeping the front slot empty so the new thing can land in the end-focus position: "There are several factors we did not anticipate" introduces "several factors" as genuinely new, then hands them to the rest of the paragraph to develop. This is the same end-focus logic that governs end-weight and given-new information ordering — existential-there is one specific tool for putting new, weighty material where the reader expects it.

It is at its best when the referent is brand new and about to be elaborated. "There are two conditions the contract must meet: ..." works because the two conditions have not been mentioned, and the sentence exists precisely to put them on the table so the following text can expand them. The construction signals "here is something new, pay attention." When the referent is genuinely new and the sentence's whole purpose is to introduce it, existential-there is the natural, reader-friendly choice.

It also softens the arrival of a problem or shortfall. "There is a discrepancy in the figures" presents the discrepancy as a fact of the situation rather than pinning it on a subject who caused it, which is often the diplomatic choice in business correspondence — related to the agent-management logic behind passive-voice strategic deployment. Presenting a problem existentially can be exactly right when you want the fact noticed without assigning blame.

When fronting the subject reads better

The alternative to presenting a referent with existential-there is to make it the grammatical subject and let it act. Often this is tighter and stronger.

Front the subject when it is already known or easy to grasp. If the reader already knows about the three issues, "The three issues remain unresolved" is cleaner than "There are still three issues that remain unresolved." Existential-there earns its place introducing new referents; using it for information the reader already holds just adds an empty opening and a relative clause the sentence does not need.

Front the subject when a strong verb is available. "There is a need for the team to review the contract" buries the action in the noun "need" and the empty "there is." "The team must review the contract" fronts the real subject and lets a real verb carry the meaning. Existential-there paired with an abstract noun ("there is a requirement / a possibility / an expectation that...") is a frequent way that action leaks out of verbs and into nouns — the same drift addressed by nominalization control for register and information density. When a live verb is waiting, front the subject and use it.

Front the subject when concision is under pressure. In a timed response, "There are many companies that use this approach" is six words spent before the real content; "Many companies use this approach" says the same thing in five and reads faster. The existential opening plus a relative clause ("There are X that...") is one of the most reliable places to cut words without losing meaning, which makes it a prime target for redundancy and wordiness elimination. If you can turn "There are X that verb" into "X verb," almost always do.

The traps that make existential-there feel like padding

Because existential-there is grammatical everywhere, its overuse never trips an error flag — it just accumulates into flat, padded prose. Three patterns account for most of the damage.

The habitual opener. A writer who opens sentence after sentence with "There is / There are" produces a paragraph with no forward momentum, because every clause starts by announcing existence instead of reporting action. The reader feels the flatness even if no single sentence is wrong. The fix is variety: reserve existential-there for the sentences that genuinely introduce something new, and let other sentences front their subjects and act.

The existential-plus-relative-clause stretch. "There are several factors that need to be considered" packs an empty opener, a bare noun, and a relative clause around a small idea. Collapsed, it becomes "Several factors need consideration" or "Consider several factors." The existential-plus-"that"-clause shape is almost always compressible, and spotting it is a fast, mechanical edit.

The existential hiding a real subject that wants to act. "There was a decision made by the committee to postpone" hides a perfectly good active sentence: "The committee decided to postpone." When existential-there combines with a passive and a nominalized verb, it can bury the entire content of a sentence behind empty structure. Recovering the real subject and verb almost always shortens and strengthens the line.

The packaging check that keeps openings earning their structure

Existential-there is not wrong — it is a precise tool that is easy to overuse. The defense is a quick check applied to every sentence that opens with "there is" or "there are."

Ask whether the referent is genuinely new. If the thing after "there is" is new to the reader and the sentence exists to introduce it, existential-there is doing its job — keep it. If the reader already knows the referent, front it as the subject instead.

Ask whether a real verb is available. If the existential opener is followed by an abstract noun ("there is a need / a requirement / a possibility"), look for the verb hiding inside it and rebuild the sentence around that verb. "There is a need to X" becomes "We must X" or "X is necessary."

Ask whether the opening plus relative clause can collapse. If the sentence is "There are X that verb," test whether "X verb" says the same thing. It almost always does, and the shorter form reads faster under the time pressure of a timed response.

Scan the paragraph for repetition. Count the sentences that open with existential-there. If more than one or two in a paragraph do, rewrite the extras to front their subjects, and reserve the construction for the one or two places where introducing a genuinely new referent is the whole point.

Existential-there is a way of telling the reader "something new is arriving." Used for that, once or twice where it counts, it packages new information exactly where the reader expects it. Used as a default opener, it flattens the prose and pads the word count. The discipline in TOEIC Link Writing is the same as the discipline that governs every packaging choice: match the structure to the job the sentence is actually doing, and let the sentences that introduce something new look different from the ones that report what is already known.