How would you evaluate my GRE essays?

[Charisma]

Hello everyone. 

These are my responses to Official Guide's 1st practice test. Could you please have a look and tell me how it's lacking? (possibly a score?)

Thank you all.

Issue Task

The best way to teach is to praise positive actions and ignore negative ones.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree
with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take.
In developing and supporting your position, describe specific circumstances in
which adopting the recommendation would or would not be advantageous and
explain how these examples shape your position.

I found the statement quite lacking on many ascpects, and therefore I do not support its message. 
First, I believe that "positive" and "negative", can be highly subjective terms depending of the problem at hand and in most practical situations, no such dichotomy exists and the positive and negative tend to segue into one another in very subtle ways. Therefore it's outright simplistic to think we can neatly catagorize actions into such limited groupings. 
More importantly, even attempting to do such think will be counterproductive in the longterm; by teaching a binary logic framework, we (possibly inadvertantly) are teaching that such framework is applicable in other situations; this, as stated before is simply not the case in our increasingly complex and convoluted world. Abortion is one topic where plausible arguments exist for both pro-life and pro-choice sides and the ethical choices depends on som many factors that the right/wrong dichotomy fails to capture its intricacies, let alone produce the almighty "right answer". 
Instead, what we should be teaching children is critical thinking; its value as well as how it is done. Of course it is a daunting task but it is by far the most invaluable life lesson we could provide our children. 
Second, it is not enough to merely praise or discredit, teachers must take a position and defend it and by doing so, teachers are indeed on their way to teach critical thinking instead of feeding their puiples with already-chewed food for thought; what the French aptly named "les pret-a-pensee", ready to be thought. 
At last, it should be noted that ignoring "negative actions" is potentially dangerous. And while we need to teach our students to think critically, we need to provide examlpes of what we deem negative and most importantly why. Ignoring negative actions is infentalizing in the sense that we deprive our student of a chance to practice their newly built skills, by providing them with a faux protection from what really takes place in the world. 

Argument Task

The following appeared in an article written by Dr. Karp, an anthropologist.

“Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Tertia and
concluded from his observations that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village
rather than by their own biological parents. However, my recent interviews with children
living in the group of islands that includes Tertia show that these children spend much more
time talking about their biological parents than about other adults in the village. This
research of mine proves that Dr. Field's conclusion about Tertian village culture is invalid
and thus that the observation-centered approach to studying cultures is invalid as well. The
interview-centered method that my team of graduate students is currently using in Tertia will
establish a much more accurate understanding of child-rearing traditions there and in other
island cultures.”

Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the
argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.

The article makes three distinct conclusions, that "Dr. Field's conclusion about Tertian village is invalid"  and therefore that "observation-centered approach to studying culture is invalid". The third conclusion is in fact a prediction; that the "interview-centered approach"will yield a "much more acurate understanding of child rearing traditions". 

The first conclusion is drawn based on Dr. Karp's group's interviews with "children living in the group of islands that includes Tertia", however the size of the group interviewed and the population of children living in these regions are not mentioned. It is indeed possible that the conclusions drawn, by one or both of the researchers, are invalid, simply because the group they interviewd (or observed) is not representative of the status quo in the region and therefore one or both studies have not captured the exisitng trend in the islands. 
More importantly, Dr. Karp mentions that he has interviewed children from a larger group of children; a group that included Tertian children but also a number of other children. It is therefore clear that with the lack of statistical data about the ethnic and geographic background of each child interviewed, one can not arrive at the conclusion that Dr.Karp's concluisons are valid. It is entirely possible that a large proportion of children interviewed are indeed not from Tertia Village, but from surronding villages, with possibly different cultures. 
Second, even if Dr. Karp's conclusion about child rearing in Tertia is valid, it neither ensures the validity of his method nor discredits that of Dr. Field's. It is possible that each method have their merits as well of weaknesses and that the choice of method can be made according to the realities of the studied region. No such realities are mentioned in the article. 
Third, the effectiveness of Dr. Karp's method can be questioned. Children interviewed may have a tendency to misreprensent the relevant facts of their lives due to a number of reasons. The most important one is that they simply cannot grasp the adult aspects of child rearing that escapes their attention; for example, the villagers may all bear some responsibility for the safty of the village's children, while most children are obeliviously carrying on with their child play. Therefore we see how misconducted interviews or a limted number of interviews could lead to erronous conclusions. 
Thus, considering all of the above, we cannot discredit Dr.Field's method or assign exclusive credit to Dr.Krap's. We need to ensure statistical soundness of both studies and without those the majority of the generalist conclusions mentioned at the beginning (especially the second and the third) are unwarranted. 

 

 

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Thanks again for taking the time for reading my essays. They are indeed my "essays" (in French literally "trys") to show my critical thinking. However somehow they managed to reveal my technical background by lacking literary refinement! Do you have any particular approach to improve? other than, obviously, writing more?

Edited September 22, 2015 by Charisma