Can anyone help me with AWA section of GRE?

[Elina]

 

Hello, I have started to practice GRE online to apply to grad school and I do not have a teacher or a tutor to look at my writing and give me feedback. If it is not too much trouble can someone look at this Issue and Argument tasks and tell me what grade it is approximately and how can I improve? Thank you in advance.

AWA.docx

[hdunders]

Hey, 

Not sure if you still want this grading but i couldn't open the file so others may also have this issue, just letting you know ..

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[Elina]

@hdunders thank you for the comment, here is the full text of the writings, sorry if it is a bit long)

Issue Task:

To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim. In developing and supporting your position, be sure to address the most compelling reasons and/or examples that could be used to challenge your position.

Great leadership crucially depends on certain traits of the leader, among which are setting the right goals and achieving them effectively, being able to make hard decisions, taking responsibility for them and posing as an example for the public. The latter point requires leaders to act on right moral and ethical grounds.

Firstly, it needs to be stated that public leaders are people who represent the whole nation. Hence, they have a big responsibility towards people to not abuse power, act based on collective not private gains and consider the consequences of their decisions. For these reasons, leaders of high moral and ethical standards would be fulfilling their sole purpose of doing what is best for the nation. They would not make decisions which would stem from private incentives, they would not lie, cheat, manipulate and steal from the society. In addition, usually leaders pose as an example for the people, which requires them to act appropriately. Having these qualities, leaders would be able to gain trust of the society and achieve excellence.

Nevertheless, in reality we observe leaders who have numerous wrongdoings and who destroy great nations. This is primarily because often leaders do not understand the responsibility that they bare towards the society, which comes from not having appropriate ethical standards. However, in many cases leaders are required to make tough decisions which would have dire consequences without no fault of their own. In this case, standards of the person do not matter rather being able to make the right call bringing less harm. In addition, being an effective leader means producing results and achieving the set goals. These depend on the motivation, knowledge and decision making of the leader and not so much on his/her standards.

Leadership is a very broad concept and there are many divergent views as to what constitutes and effective leader, however it is important that the public officials have high moral and ethical standards to not abuse their power and do what is best for the people they serve.

 

 

Argument task:

 

The following appeared in a memorandum from the planning department of an electric power company.

"Several recent surveys indicate that home owners are increasingly eager to conserve energy. At the same time, manufacturers are now marketing many home appliances, such as refrigerators and air conditioners, that are almost twice as energy efficient as those sold a decade ago. Also, new technologies for better home insulation and passive solar heating are readily available to reduce the energy needed for home heating. Therefore, the total demand for electricity in our area will not increase—and may decline slightly. Since our three electric generating plants in operation for the past twenty years have always met our needs, construction of new generating plants will not be necessary."

Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.

The argument stated above has numerous flows that decrease its validity. These include basing homeowner preferences on certain surveys without stating its details, claiming that the marketing of more energy efficient home appliances reflect purchasing behavior and neglecting other factors to estimate future demand for electricity.

The weakness of the argument comes from the unstated assumptions about the validity of the survey. In stating that homeowners are more eager to conserve energy the survey fails to mention the pool of respondents, where do they reside and what type of people are they. Since, the electricity company is concerned with the demand in their specific area, these respondents may not reflect the target group’s opinion. Moreover, the trend towards more energy conservation is very vague in the survey since it does not specifically state how they measured the eagerness and whether it is related to income of homeowners or preferences. Therefore, these details of the survey may reveal that there are no concrete proofs as to whether homeowner demand for electricity is decreasing.

The argument is also weak in assuming that firms’ marketing of certain goods at low costs certainly reflect a high demand for them. If we consider this part alone, it is unreasonable to assume that people are more likely to conserve energy just because there are many low-cost energy saving appliances. People may purchase these goods solely due to their low cost, however if they do not habitually conserve energy they may consume even consume more with other activities. Hence, the preferences of the people are not revealed by only the amount of firm marketing.

Lastly, the argument is weak since it concentrates on vague surveys and supply side analysis to determine and forecast the demand of their consumers. To decide whether it is beneficial to open a new electricity plant, the company needs to specifically look at what other ways they can estimate the future demand for electricity such as the state of the economy, their own statistics regarding the current usage of electricity or the movement of electricity usage over time. By including these specific details in the argument, the conclusion may reverse or become stronger.

The given argument lacks strength due to three main reasons, which are basing decision on questionable survey results, making assumptions about habits of consumers based on firm marketing and failing to directly address the demand of customers for opening a new energy plant.