Cool Essays: Critique and Get Good GRE Karma

[Bunny09]

Educators should take students' interests into account when planning the content of the courses they teach. 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.

While some argue that students' interest should influence the course curriculum, this idyllic viewpoint simply is not a viable option for the education system in the United States.Furthermore, the costs far out weigh the benefits and rather than tailor the content of their courses, educators should instead focus on how the information is being presented in order to maintain a consistent, academically rigorous, and effective system of learning for all students.

 

The concept that students' interests should be taken into account is heavily dependent on the assumption that students are actually interested in the course they are taking. Until graduate school, students in the United States are doled out pre-requsite courses that may or may not be of interest. If a student is not interested in general in say Organic Chemistry or even Social Psychology, how will planning the content of a course be impacted? It is likely that student will want to examine things far beyond the scope of that course. Therefore, this basic assumption that students interest will marry with the course content is not likely.

Educators have spent years designing a course and augmenting it to meet the needs of students as well as satisfy national standards. If students are allowed to inlfuence the content of the courses taught by educators then courses will no longer be equitable. Even within a single major, the discrepancies can be problematic. For example, a multivarate analysis of variance course at San Francisco State University dictated by Social Psychology majors will be vastly different than a course curated by Industial and Organized Psychology majors. In fact, the higher one climbs in academia educators are able to tailor their courses to meet the specific needs of students. This cannot be accomplished in

earlier areas of education because much of the educational system in the United States relies on

 a standardized form of general education.

While the idea that the education system would richly enhanced by student input is not without merit, itis not the course content students should be influencing rather it is how the information is being presented. Some students may be visual learners, some may find lectures difficult to focus on, and others may need more active engagement with fellow students to cement concepts. Across diciplines and levels of education, students

may sturggle not with the content but how it is being presented. Here educators can meet students needs while also satisfying the general education requirments set in the United States. Certainly arguments can be made that at times these regimented standards of education may stifle the very core of education; yet, it is not in placing the control in the hands of students that this issue will be solved. Rather, it is ensuring that educators can effective design courses to translate course material so as to ensure students have a stimulating and strong start to pursue their academic and professional goals.

Therefore, while the idea that students should play a larger role in the education process is sound the manner in which it is presented is flawed. By integrating students' interest into the content of courses many educators would not be able to provide an equal academic footing for students placing even more work on the tragically underpaid educators in the United States.  

 

NOW HOW ABOUT AN ARGUMENT ESSAY? 

 

Hospital statistics regarding people who go to the emergency room after roller-skating

accidents indicate the need for more protective equipment. Within that group of people,

75 percent of those who had accidents in streets or parking lots had not been wearing any

protective clothing (helmets, knee pads, etc.) or any light-reflecting material

(clip-on lights, glow-in-the-dark wrist pads, etc.). Clearly, the statistics indicate

that by investing in high-quality protective gear and reflective equipment, roller skaters

will greatly reduce their risk of being severely injured in an accident.

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.

 

While the hospital statistics appear to herald a push for shiny, reflective new safety gear for roller skaters the assumption is based on several weak claims. As a result, the claims that investing in glow-in-the-dark safety gear will reduce skaters risk of accidents cannot be examined without further scrutiny.

 

There is no mention of the time of day or relative frequency roller skaters find themselves in the emergency room after a accident. There may be a paucity of related accidents. The group of people listed in the hospitals statistic may be as little as four or as large as four hundred. In addition, these accidents may have occured over the course of a year or during a weekend where a group of college fraternities had a drunken roller-skate party at night. Enforcing these changes for infrequent events would be a waste of resources. Without knowing very important details concerning the frequency and amount of these emergecy room visits one cannot accurately gauage how impactful protective gear would be in reducing the amount of severly injured roller skaters.

 

Given that three out of every four roller skater related accidents occur in streets or parking lots it may be an issue of rollerskaters having to share the road with motorists--not a lack of gear--that is playing a role in the accidents. Furthermore, there is no mention of the conditions for roller skaters. Is there a safe way for rollerskaters to navigate roads? Wearing protective gear head to toe will not be an effective way to prevent injuries if motorists are constantly clipping roller skaters due to sharing packed roads.

 

The sample of individuals is also terribly biased in that the liklihood of a serious injury is inflated for roller skaters who felt their injuries merrited a visit to the emergency room. There is no comparison or mention to the amount of injuries sustained by roller skaters who did not require serious medical attention. As a result, it is likely the individuals most severely injured would be over represented as those that needed to visit a hospital to treat their injuries. There may be substantially more roller skaters who do not wear protective gear without incident. With the limited amount of information, a much more grim picture may be painted and the individuals visiting the hospital may not be representative of the general population of roller skaters in this area. Futhermore, there is no mention of the location of these hospitals which may be across the United States or concentrated in one bustling city or on small town. Without knowing how typical the group sampled for these

hospital statistics,

 

Given these three issues, more research into the nature of these roller skater accidents should be conducted. With only the current evidence presented it would be a poor investment to bank on wrist pads and reflectors as a means of meeting ths saftey needs of roller skaters in this community. The argument is founded on assumptions that therefore must be verified in order to substantiate the claim that the risk of injury will be dramtically reduced for roller skaters.

 

 

[TheBumChikiBum]

My personal view. Certainly ain't the final word or the best advice you can get out there. Still : 

ISSUE :

1. Starting paragraph needs to be better.

2. Grammar seems to be fine.

3. Paragraph formation needs to vastly better. (Or did you just mess up while copy-pasting?)

4. How about you talk about stuff other than USA ? Don't stretch too much on one example. It's similar to milking the one cash cow you've got.

5. The ETS needs to know to more ideas you can get regarding a single issue. At-least try to give two examples, if not three.

6. I don't know the amount of words you have got there, but try crossing 500.

7. Include a few GRE words.

 

ARGUMENT : 

1. Starting paragraph needs to be longer. Try including four to five sentences.

2. Grammar seems to be fine.

3. State more questions. Five to six should be adequate. State shortfall of each question. Sample questions: 

(a) Why should you do conclusion base on just one hospital statistics.

(b) Higher Percentage always doesn't mean more numbers.

(c) Period of data collection. Weather etc.

4. Include a few GRE words.

 

How about some KARMA now ?

Edited October 4, 2015 by TheBumChikiBum
Selfish