GRE Review of the Analytical Writing Section

OVERVIEW:
The analytical writing section tests your critical thinking and analytical writing skills. It assesses your ability to articulate and support complex ideas, analyze an argument, and sustain a focused and coherent discussion. It does not assess specific content knowledge.

The analytical writing section consists of two separately-timed analytical writing tasks:

• a 45-minute “Present Your Perspective on an Issue” task

• a 30-minute “Analyze an Argument” task

You will be given a choice between two Issue topics. Each states an opinion on an issue of broad interest and asks you to discuss the issue from any perspective(s) you wish, as long as you provide relevant reasons and examples to explain and support your views.

You will not have a choice of Argument topics. The Argument task presents a different challenge from that of the Issue task: it requires you to critique a given argument by discussing how well reasoned you find it. You will need to consider the logical soundness of the argument rather than to agree or disagree with the position it presents.

The two tasks are complementary in that one requires you to construct your own argument by taking a position and providing evidence supporting your views on the issue, whereas the other requires you to critique someone else’s argument by assessing its claims and evaluating the evidence it provides.

How the Analytical Writing Section is Scored

Each response is holistically scored on a 6-point scale according to the criteria published in the GRE analytical writing scoring guides (see Appendix A ). Holistic scoring means that each response is judged as a whole: readers do not separate the response into component parts and award a certain number of points for a particular criterion or element such as ideas, organization, sentence structure, or language. Instead, readers assign scores based on the overall quality of the response, considering all of its characteristics in an integrated way. Excellent organization or poor organization, for example, will be part of the readers’ overall impression of the response and will therefore contribute to the score, but organization, as a distinct feature, has no specific weight.

In general, GRE readers are college and university faculty experienced in teaching courses in which writing and critical thinking skills are important. All GRE readers have undergone careful training, passed stringent GRE qualifying tests, and demonstrated that they are able to maintain scoring accuracy.

To ensure fairness and objectivity in scoring

• responses are randomly distributed to the readers

• all identifying information about the test takers is concealed from the readers

• each response is scored by two readers

• readers do not know what other scores a response may have received

• the scoring procedure requires that each response receive identical or adjacent scores from two readers; any other score combination is adjudicated by a third GRE reader

The scores given for the two tasks are then averaged for a final reported score. The score level descriptions, presented in Appendix A , provide information on how to interpret the total score on the analytical writing section. The primary emphasis in scoring the analytical writing section is on critical thinking and analytical writing skills.

Note: The GRE Program is investigating the use of e-rater, ETS's ground breaking automated scoring system, as part of the scoring process for the analytical writing section. If e-rater is incorporated into the scoring process during the 2004-05 testing year, information will be available on the GRE Web site at http://www.gre.org/.

Your essay responses on the analytical writing section will be reviewed by ETS essay-similaritydetection software and by experienced essay readers during the scoring process. In light of the high value placed on independent intellectual activity within United States graduate schools and universities, ETS reserves the right to cancel test scores of any test taker when there is substantial evidence that an essay response includes, but is not limited to, any of the following:

• text that is substantially similar to that found on one or more other GRE essay responses;

Present Your Perspective on an Issue Task

The “Present Your Perspective on an Issue” task assesses your ability to think critically about a topic of general interest and to clearly express your thoughts about it in writing. Each topic, presented in quotation marks, makes a claim about an issue that test takers can discuss from various perspectives and apply to many different situations or conditions.

Your

task is to present a compelling case for your own position on the issue. Be sure to read the claim carefully and think about it from several points of view, considering the complexity of ideas associated with those perspectives. Then, make notes about the position you want to develop and list the main reasons and examples that you could use to support that position. The Issue task allows considerable latitude in the way you respond to the claim. Although it is important that you address the central issue, you are free to take any approach you wish. For example, you might
 

• agree absolutely with the claim, disagree completely, or agree with some parts and not others

• question the assumptions the statement seems to be making

• qualify any of its terms, especially if the way you define or apply a term is important to developing your perspective on the issue

• point out why the claim is valid in some situations but not in others

• evaluate points of view that contrast with your own perspective

• develop your position with reasons that are supported by several relevant examples or by a single extended example

The GRE readers scoring your response are not looking for a “right” answer—in fact, there is no correct position to take. Instead, the readers are evaluating the skill with which you articulate and develop an argument to support your position on the issue.

Understanding the Context for Writing: Purpose and Audience

The Issue task is an exercise in critical thinking and persuasive writing. The purpose of this task is to determine how well you can develop a compelling argument supporting your own perspective on an issue and to effectively communicate that argument in writing to an academic audience. Your audience consists of college and university faculty who are trained as GRE readers to apply the scoring criteria identified in the scoring guide for “Present Your Perspective on an Issue” .

To get a clearer idea of how GRE readers apply the Issue scoring criteria to actual responses, you should review scored sample Issue essay responses and readers’ commentaries. The sample responses, particularly at the 5 and 6 score levels, will show you a variety of successful strategies for organizing, developing, and communicating a persuasive argument. The readers’ commentaries discuss specific aspects of analysis and writing, such as the use of examples, development and support, organization, language fluency, and word choice. For each response, the commentary points out aspects that are particularly persuasive as well as any that detract from the overall effectiveness of the essay.

Preparing for the Issue Task

Because the Issue task is meant to assess the persuasive writing skills that you have developed throughout your education, it has been designed neither to require any particular course of study nor to advantage students with a particular type of training. Many college textbooks on composition offer advice on persuasive writing that you might find useful, but even this advice might be more technical and specialized than you need for the Issue task. You will not be expected to know specific critical thinking or writing terms or strategies; instead, you should be able to use reasons, evidence, and examples to support your position on an issue.

Suppose, for instance, that an Issue topic asks you to consider whether it is important for government to provide financial support for art museums. If your position is that government should fund art museums, you might support your position by discussing the reasons art is important and explain that museums are public places where art is available to anyone. On the other hand, if your position is that government should not support museums, you might point out that, given limited governmental funds, art museums are not as deserving of governmental funding as are other, more socially important, institutions. Or, if you are in favor of government funding for art museums only under certain conditions, you might focus on the artistic criteria, cultural concerns, or political conditions that you think should determine how—or whether—art museums receive government funds. It is not your position that matters so much as the critical thinking skills you display in developing your position. ne of these two. Because the 45-minute timing egins when you first see the two topics, you should not spend too much time making a decision. Instead, try to choose fairly quickly the issue that you feel better prepared to discuss.

Directions*

Present your perspective on the issue below, using relevant reasons and/or examples to support your views.

Sample Topic

“In our time, specialists of all kinds are highly overrated. We need more generalists—people who can provide broad perspectives.”

Strategies for this Topic

This claim raises several related questions: What does it mean to be a generalist or a specialist, and what value do they have for society? Does society actually need more generalists, and are specialists, in fact,“highly overrated”?

There are several basic positions you could take on this issue: Yes, society needs more generalists and places too high a value on specialists. No, the opposite is true. Or, it depends on various factors. Or, both groups are important in today’s culture; neither is overvalued. Your analysis might draw examples from a particular society or country, from one or more areas of society, or from various situations. It might focus on the role of generalists and specialists in relation to communications, transportation, politics, information, or technology. Any of these approaches is valid, as long as you use relevant reasons and examples to support your position.

Before you stake out a position, take a few moments to reread the claim. To analyze it, consider questions such as these:

• What are the main differences between specialists and generalists? What are the strong points of each?

• Do these differences always hold in various professions or situations? Could there be some specialists, for example, who also need to have very broad knowledge and general abilities to perform their work well?

• How do generalists and specialists function in your field?

• What value do you think society places on specialists and generalists? Are specialists overvalued in some situations, and not in others?

• Does society really need more generalists than it has? If so, what needs would they serve?

Now you can organize your thoughts into two groups:

• Reasons and examples to support the claim

• Reasons and examples to support an opposing point of view

If you find one view clearly more persuasive than the other, consider developing an argument from that perspective. As you build your argument, keep in mind the other points, which you could argue against.

If both groups have compelling points, consider developing a position supporting, not the stated claim, but a more limited or more complex claim. Then you can use reasons and examples from both sides to justify your position.

Deciding Which Issue Topic to Choose

Remember that the General Test will contain two ssue topics from the published pool; you must choose

Before making a choice, read each topic carefully. Then decide on which topic you could develop a more effective and well-reasoned argument. In making this decision, you might ask yourself:

• Which topic do I find more interesting or engaging?

• Which topic more closely relates to my own academic studies or other experiences?

• On which topic can I more clearly explain and defend my perspective?

• On which topic can I more readily think of strong reasons and examples to support my position?

Your answers to these questions should help you make your choice.

The Form of Your Response

You are free to organize and develop your response in any way that you think will effectively communicate your ideas about the issue. Your response may, but need not, incorporate particular writing strategies learned in English composition or writing-intensive college courses.

GRE readers will not be looking for a particular developmental strategy or mode of writing; in fact, when GRE readers are trained, they review hundreds of Issue responses that, although highly diverse in content and form, display similar levels of critical thinking and persuasive writing. Readers will see, for example, some Issue responses at the 6 score level that begin by briefly summarizing the writer’s position on the issue and then explicitly announcing the main points to be argued. They will see others that lead into the writer’s position by making a prediction, asking a series of questions, describing a scenario, or defining critical terms in the quotation. The readers know that a writer can earn a high score by giving multiple examples or by presenting a single, extended example. Look at the sample Issue responses, particularly at the 5 and 6 score levels, to see how other writers have successfully developed and organized their arguments.

You should use as many or as few paragraphs as you consider appropriate for your argument—for example, you will probably need to create a new paragraph whenever your discussion shifts to a new cluster of ideas. What matters is not the number of examples, the number of paragraphs, or the form your argument takes but, rather, the cogency of your ideas about the issue and the clarity and skill with which you communicate those ideas to academic readers.

An excellent way to prepare for the Issue task is to practice writing on some of the published topics. There is no “best” approach: some people prefer to start practicing without regard to the 45-minute time limit; others prefer to take a “timed test” first and practice within the time limit. No matter which approach you take when you practice the Issue task, you should review the task directions, then

• carefully read the claim made in the topic and make sure you understand the issue involved; if it seems unclear, discuss it with a friend or teacher

• think about the issue in relation to your own ideas and experiences, to events you have read

about or observed, and to people you have known; this is the knowledge base from which you will develop compelling reasons and examples in your argument that reinforce, negate, or qualify the claim in some way

• decide what position on the issue you want to take and defend—remember you are free to agree or disagree completely or to agree with some parts or some applications but not others

• decide what compelling evidence (reasons and examples) you can use to support your position Remember that this is a task in critical thinking and persuasive writing. Therefore, you might find it helpful to explore the complexity of a claim in one of the topics by asking yourself the following questions:

• What, precisely, is the central issue?

• Do I agree with all or with any part of the claim? Why or why not?

• Does the claim make certain assumptions? If so, are they reasonable?

• Is the claim valid only under certain conditions? If so, what are they?

• Do I need to explain how I interpret certain terms or concepts used in the claim?

• If I take a certain position on the issue, what reasons support my position?

• What examples—either real or hypothetical— ould I use to illustrate those reasons and dvance my point of view? Which examples are ost compelling?

Once you have decided on a position to defend, onsider the perspective of others who might not gree with your position. Ask yourself:

• What reasons might someone use to refute or ndermine my position?

• How should I acknowledge or defend against hose views in my essay?

To plan your response, you might want to summarize our position and make brief notes about how you ill support the position you’re going to take. When ou’ve done this, look over your notes and decide ow you will organize your response. Then write a esponse developing your position on the issue. Even f you don’t write a full response, you should find it elpful to practice with a few of the Issue topics and o sketch out your possible responses. After you ave practiced with some of the topics, try writing esponses to some of the topics within the 45-minute ime limit so that you have a good idea of how to use our time in the actual test.

Next, compare your response to the scoring guide. ocus on seeing how your paper meets or misses the erformance standards and what you therefore need o do in order to improve.

• quoting or paraphrasing, without attribution, anguage, or ideas that appear in published or npublished sources;

• unacknowledged use of work that has been roduced through collaboration with others ithout citation of the contribution of others

• essays that are submitted as work of the examinee when the ideas or words have, in fact, been borrowed from elsewhere or prepared by another person.

When one or more of these circumstances occurs, your essay text, in ETS’s professional judgement, does not reflect the independent, analytical writing skills that this test seeks to measure. Therefore, ETS must cancel the essay score as invalid and cannot report the GRE General Test scores of which the essay score is an indispensable part.

Test takers whose scores are canceled will forfeit their test fees and must pay to take the entire GRE General Test again at a future administration. No record of score cancellations, or the reason for cancellation, will appear on their future score reports sent to colleges and universities.