The Analytical Writing portion of the GRE®General Test consists of two writing topics, an Issue topic and an Argument topic. This document contains the writing topics for Practice Test #3, the scoring guides for each section, and sample responses with commentaries for each topic. Note: Sample responses are reproduced exactly as written, including misspellings, wrong choice of File Size: 2MB Analyze an Issue Sample Issue Topic Directions You will be given a brief quotation that states or implies an issue of general interest and specific instructions on how to respond to that issue. Plan and compose a response in which you develop a position on the issue according to the specific blogger.com Size: 1MB Mar 27, · The first of the GRE sample essays we’ll be looking at is written in response to the following “Analyze an Issue” prompt: As people rely more and more on technology to solve problems, the ability of humans to think for themselves will surely blogger.comted Reading Time: 13 mins
GRE Issue Essay: Practice Sample Prompts – Kaplan Test Prep
The sample essays that follow were written in response to the prompt that appears below. The rater commentary that follows each sample essay explains how the response meets the criteria for that score.
For a more complete understanding of the criteria for each score point, see the "Analyze an Issue" Scoring Guide. As people rely more and more on technology to solve problems, the ability of humans to think for themselves will surely deteriorate. Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
Note: All responses are reproduced exactly as written, including errors, misspellings, etc. The statement linking technology negatively with free thinking plays on recent human experience over the past century. Surely there has been no time in history where the lived lives of people have changed more dramatically. A quick reflection on a typical day reveals how technology has revolutionized the world.
Most people commute to work in an automobile that runs on an internal combustion engine. During the workday, chances are high that the employee will interact with a computer that processes information on silicon bridges that are.
Upon leaving home, family members will be reached through wireless networks that utilize satellites orbiting the earth. Each of these common occurrences could have been inconceivable at the turn of the 19th century. The statement attempts to bridge these dramatic changes to a reduction in the ability for humans to think for themselves.
The assumption is that an increased reliance on technology negates the need for people to think creatively to solve previous quandaries.
Looking back at the introduction, gre analyze an issue sample essays, one could argue that without a car, computer, or mobile phone, the hypothetical worker would need to find alternate methods of transport, information processing and communication.
Technology short circuits this thinking by making the problems obsolete. However, this reliance on technology does not necessarily preclude the creativity that marks the human species. The prior examples reveal that technology allows for convenience.
The car, computer and phone all release additional time for people to live more efficiently. This efficiency does not preclude the need for humans to think for themselves.
In fact, technology frees humanity to not only tackle new problems, but may itself create new issues that did not exist without technology. For example, the proliferation of automobiles has introduced a need for fuel conservation on a global scale. With increasing energy demands from emerging markets, global warming becomes a concern inconceivable to the horse-and-buggy generation.
Likewise dependence on oil has created nation-states that are not dependent on taxation, allowing ruling parties to oppress minority groups such as women. Solutions to these complex problems require the unfettered imaginations of maverick scientists and politicians.
In contrast to the statement, we can even see how technology frees the human imagination. Consider how the digital revolution and the advent of the internet has allowed for an unprecedented exchange of ideas.
WebMD, a popular internet portal for medical information, permits patients to self research symptoms for a more informed doctor visit.
This exercise opens pathways of thinking that were previously closed off to the medical layman. With increased interdisciplinary interactions, inspiration can arrive from the most surprising corners.
Jeffrey Sachs, one of the architects of the UN Millenium Development Goals, gre analyze an issue sample essays, based his ideas on emergency care triage techniques. The unlikely marriage of economics and medicine has healed tense, hyperinflation environments from South America to Eastern Europe.
This last example provides the most hope in how technology actually provides hope to the future of humanity. By increasing our reliance on technology, impossible goals can now be achieved. Consider how the late 20th century witnessed the complete elimination of smallpox. This disease had ravaged the human race since prehistorical days, and yet with the technology of vaccines, free thinking humans dared to imagine a world free of smallpox, gre analyze an issue sample essays.
Using technology, battle plans were drawn out, and smallpox was systematically targeted and eradicated. Technology will always mark the human experience, from the discovery of fire to the implementation of nanotechnology. Given the history gre analyze an issue sample essays the gre analyze an issue sample essays race, there will be no limit to the number of problems, both new and old, for us to tackle.
There is no need to retreat to a Luddite attitude to new things, but rather embrace a hopeful posture to the possibilities that technology gre analyze an issue sample essays for new avenues of human imagination. The author of this essay stakes out a clear and insightful position on the issue and follows the specific instructions by presenting reasons to support that position.
The essay cogently argues that technology does not decrease our ability to think for ourselves, but merely provides "additional time for people to live more efficiently. In further examples, the essay shows how technology allows for the linking of ideas that may never have been connected in the past like medicine and economic modelspushing people to think in new ways.
Examples are persuasive and fully developed; reasoning is logically sound and well supported. Ideas in the essay are connected logically, with effective transitions used both between paragraphs "However" or "In contrast to the statement" and within paragraphs. Sentence structure is varied and complex and the essay clearly demonstrates facility with the "conventions of standard written English i. Thus, this essay meets all the requirements for receiving a top score, a 6.
Surely many of us have expressed the following sentiment, or some variation on it, during our daily commutes to work: "People are getting so stupid these days! Furthermore, hanging around with the younger, pre-commute generation, whom tech-savviness seems to have rendered lethal, is even less reassuring. With "Teen People" style trends shooting through the air from gre analyze an issue sample essays PDA to zebra-striped PDA, and with the latest starlet gossip zipping from juicy Blackberry to teeny, turbo-charged cell phone, technology seems to support young people's worst tendencies to follow the crowd.
Indeed, they have seemingly evolved into intergalactic conformity police. After all, today's tech-aided teens are, courtesy of authentic, hands-on video games, literally trained to kill; courtesy of chat and instant text messaging, they have their own language; they even have tiny cameras to efficiently photodocument your fashion blunders!
Is this adolescence, or paparazzi terrorist training camp? With all this evidence, it's easy to believe that tech gre analyze an issue sample essays and the incorporation of technological wizardry into our everyday lives have served mostly to enforce conformity, promote dependence, heighten comsumerism and materialism, and generally create a culture that values self-absorption and personal entitlement over cooperation and collaboration.
However, I argue that we are merely in the inchoate stages of learning to live with technology while still loving one another. After all, even given the examples provided earlier in this essay, it seems clear that technology hasn't impaired our thinking and problem-solving capacities. Certainly it has incapacitated our behavior and manners; certainly our values have taken a severe blow.
However, we are inarguably more efficient in our badness these days. We're effective worker bees of ineffectiveness! Harnessed correctly, technology can improve our ability to think and act for ourselves. Gre analyze an issue sample essays first challenge is to figure out how to provide technology users with some direly-needed direction.
The language of this essay clearly illustrates both its strengths and weaknesses. The flowery and sometimes uncannily keen descriptions are often used to powerful effect, but at other times, the writing is awkward and the comparisons somewhat strained.
See, for example, the ungainly sequence of independent clauses in the second-to-last sentence of paragraph 2 "After all, today's tech-aided teens There is consistent evidence of facility with syntax and complex vocabulary "Surrounded as we are by striding and strident automatons with cell phones glued to their ears, PDA's gripped in their palms, and omniscient, omnipresent CNN gleaming in their eyeballs, gre analyze an issue sample essays, it's tempting to believe However, such lucid prose is sometimes countered by an over-reliance on abstractions and reasoning that is not entirely effective.
For example, what does the fact that video games "literally train [teens] to kill" have to do with the use or deterioration of thinking abilities? On the whole, however, the response develops its ideas about the ways that technology can promote isolation and conformity with well-chosen examples, even if its ideas about the positive effects of technology are less successfully realized.
Because this essay provides generally thoughtful analysis and takes a complex approach to the issue arguing, in effect, that technology neither enhances nor reduces our ability to think for ourselves, but can do one or the other, depending on the user and because the author makes use of "appropriate vocabulary and sentence variety," a score of 5 is appropriate.
In all actuality, I think it is more probable that our bodies will surely deteriorate long before our minds do in any significant amount. Who can't say that technology has made us lazier, but that's the key word, lazy, gre analyze an issue sample essays, not stupid. The ever increasing amount of technology that we incorporate into our daily lives makes people think and learn every day, possibly more than ever before.
Our abilities to think, learn, philosophize, etc. may even reach limits never dreamed of before by average people. Using technology to solve problems will continue to help us realize our potential as a human race.
If you think about it, using technology to solve more complicating problems gives humans a chance to expand their thinking and learning, opening up whole new worlds for many people. Many of these people are glad for the chance to expand their horizons by learning more, going to new places, and trying new things. If it wasn't for the invention of new technological devices, I wouldn't be sitting at this computer trying to philosophize about technology.
It would be extremely hard for children in much poorer countries to learn and think for themselves with out the invention of the internet. Think what an impact the printing press, a technologically superior mackine at the time, had on the ability of the human race to learn and think. Right now we are seeing a golden age of technology, using it all the time during our every day lives. When we get up there's instant coffee and the microwave and all these gre analyze an issue sample essays things that help us get ready for our day.
But we aren't allowing our gre analyze an issue sample essays to deteriorate by using them, we are only making things easier for ourselves and saving time for other important things in our days. Going off to school or work in our cars instead of a horse and buggy. Think of the brain power and genius that was used to come up with that single invention that has changed the way we move across this globe.
Using technology to solve our continually more complicated problems as a human race is definately a good thing. Our ability to think for ourselves isn't gre analyze an issue sample essays, it's continuing to grow, gre analyze an issue sample essays, moving on to higher though functions and more ingenious ideas.
The ability to use what technology we have is an example. This essay meets all the criteria of a level-4 essay. The writer develops a clear position "Using technology to solve problems will continue to help us realize our potential as a human race". The position is then developed with relevant reasons "using technology to solve more complicat[ed] problems gives humans a chance to expand their thinking and learning" and "we are seeing a golden age of technology".
Point 1, gre analyze an issue sample essays technology," is supported with the simple but relevant notion that technology allows us access to information and abilities to which we would not normally have access. Similarly, point 2, the "golden age," is supported by the basic description of our technologically saturated social condition. Though the overall development and organization of the essay does suffer from an occasional misdirection see paragraph 3's abrupt progression from coffee pots to the benefits of technology to carsthe essay as a whole flows smoothly and logically from one idea to the next.
It is useful to compare this essay to the level-3 essay presented next. Though both essays entail some surface-level discussion and often fail to probe deeply into the issue, this writer does take the analysis a step further. In paragraph 2, the distinction between this essay and the next one the level-3 response can most clearly be seen.
GRE Argument Essay Step-by-step Guide and Example
, time: 41:57GRE Analytical Writing Sample Essays - GRE AWA
The sample essays that follow were written in response to the prompt that appears below. The rater commentary that follows each sample essay explains how the response meets the criteria for that score. For a more complete understanding of the criteria for each score point, see the "Analyze an Issue" Scoring Guide Sep 15, · GRE Issue Essay Sample Prompt #1. 1. The emergence of the online “blogosphere” and social media has significantly weakened the quality of political discourse in the United States. Reason: When anyone can publish political opinions easily, standards for covering news and political topics will inevitably blogger.comted Reading Time: 3 mins The Analytical Writing portion of the GRE®General Test consists of two writing topics, an Issue topic and an Argument topic. This document contains the writing topics for Practice Test #3, the scoring guides for each section, and sample responses with commentaries for each topic. Note: Sample responses are reproduced exactly as written, including misspellings, wrong choice of File Size: 2MB
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