Studying for AWA

[JoséZavala]

I did the GRE a couple of months ago and I didn't do well on the AWA section. I'm trying to study to retake the test, but it's really hard to improve your writing skills on your own, especially as an adult. It's hard for me to assess the quality of my own essays, and I'm struggling a lot with the time limit. I think I can write decent essays, but when I try doing it under 30 minutes I just get rubbish. And the time issue becomes all the worse when the prompt is about a topic I've never dedicated a single thought about, and there are many of those!

Anyways, I'm starting this thread to see if anyone has a piece of advice to offer, or a struggle of his or her own to share. For example, if anyone has an idea on where to get feedback on essays—and I mean feedback, not just a score, you need to know the why behind the score to improve—I'm sure that would be very helpful for all of us. Even if it's a paid service.

If some gracious soul has the time to review one of my essays, I'm attaching one about one of those topics I had never thought about before, and it took me well above 30 minutes to write—the 30 minute version is one of the worst pieces of writing out there, if anyone is curious to read it too.

Dummy essay 2.2.docx