Could someone PRETTY PLEASE critique my first GRE practice essays??

[Kylie Ashton]

These are pretty rough I know since they were my first timed practice essays. Any and all advice and critiques are welcome!

GRE Practice Essays.docx

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

Hey Kylie,

Consider moving the essays into a google doc. Right now they aren't viewable.

[Kylie Ashton]

Nations should pass laws to preserve any remaining wilderness areas in their natural state, even if these areas could be developed for economic gain.

Write a response in which you discuss your views on the policy and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider the possible consequences of implementing the policy and explain how these consequences shape your position.

 

Due to the effects of urban development on the global climate, it would be beneficial for nations to pass laws which would preserve remaining wilderness areas.

Over the past few decades, it has become scientifically evident that the global climate has changed. Average temperatures have increased, resulting in a domino effect of environmental changes including melting ice caps, rising ocean levels, extreme flooding, and increasing rates of significant natural disasters. This elevated temperature level has been credited to air pollution caused by excess levels of carbon dioxide and diminished levels of oxygen; such carbon dioxide levels attack the atmospheric protective mechanism in place to shield the earth from the sun's intensity. By keeping the remaining wilderness areas as they are, the progression of air pollution would be either greatly reduced or, ideally, prevented entirely.

It is imperative to pass laws which would prevent the development of remaining wilderness areas because urbanizing such environmentally helpful regions would further worsen the global climate, which is already evidently on the decline. In eliminating the natural wildlife of these areas, trees would be removed, animals would be forced into new areas--with potentially entirely different climates to which they are not accustomed to-- and an influx of human behavior would take their place. An increased human population would bring with it a large number of buildings, but, more importantly, also a large number of cars. These cars, which emit carbon dioxide, would add to the already large imbalance between carbon dioxide and oxygen levels, thereby destroying the atmosphere that much more quickly. Ultimately, doing anything other than protecting and preserving the decreased amount of wilderness areas present will, in turn, harm our planet even further.

One may argue that developing such areas would benefit society, rather than harm it, as new development creates more jobs and sequentially improves the economy. With this perspective, new jobs will be created to construct the new buildings, to design and implement the new road systems, and maintain these additions over time. Furthermore, more jobs will be created in all of the business created in the new development. All of this, one could argue, would create jobs--improving the state of unemployment levels--as well as increase amounts of spending by creating new goods and services for the population to spend money on. However, this argument is insufficient in that it fails to recognize that the population of such a development would not be a brand new population, rather a supplanted population which came from another area; the latter would then experience decreased levels of spending and may be hurt by such a loss of population.

Nations should, in fact, pass laws which require the preservation of remaining wilderness areas because doing so would slow the present decline in the global climate, while failing to do so would directly catalyze this harmful progression.

[Kylie Ashton]

20 hours ago, GreenEyedTrombonist said:

Hey Kylie,

Consider moving the essays into a google doc. Right now they aren't viewable.

Thank you for letting me know!! I'm not very familiar with Google Docs so I'm going to try to just copy and paste them into the comments here.

[Kylie Ashton]

Arctic deer live on islands in Canada's arctic regions. They search for food by moving over ice from island to island during the course of the year. Their habitat is limited to areas warm enough to sustain the plants on which they feed and cold enough, at least some of the year, for the ice to cover the sea separating the islands, allowing the deer to travel over it. Unfortunately, according to reports from local hunters, the deer populations are declining. Since these reports coincide with recent global warming trends that have caused the sea ice to melt, we can conclude that the purported decline in deer populations is the result of the deer's being unable to follow their age-old migration patterns across the frozen sea.

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.

 

This argument is flawed based on a number of assumptions that do not necessarily ensure the conclusion.

Firstly, the author assumes that the only difference occurring is that the deer have no ice to act as a transportation device. The author ignores the possibility that the habitats of each island--and thus, the plant life on which the deer feed--may also be changed. If global warming is causing sea ice to melt, this would cause sea levels to rise and could cause flooding on the islands. Plant life could be drowned by flooding, causing the deer to have no source of food, even if there were remaining ice pieces allowing the deer to follow their typical migration patterns. The deer's migration pattern would be useless if the pattern did not lead the deer to a viable food source.

The author also fails to acknowledge the location of this habitat: within the Arctic Circle. The Arctic Circle is commonly known for its glaciers, ice caps, and generally below-freezing temperatures. While rising temperatures may very well be causing ice to melt, it is somewhat unlikely that, in this particular region, the ice would melt entirely, leaving absolutely no pieces for the deer to use. Melting ice may lead to less ice pieces, for deer to travel on, or perhaps smaller ice pieces, however such it does not then follow that melting ice would lead to absolutely no ice at all.

Lastly, the conclusion given by the author assumes that the deer population has not changed within itself. It is possible that mating patterns have changed, leading to a population that is not reproducing as quickly as it is dying, ultimately resulting in a decreased population. By contrast, the overall health of the deer may have changed, say, due to a disease, causing the population to die at a quicker rate than is normal. Similarly, the population of predators in this region may have experienced an increase, also possibly resulting in an inequality in the rate of death relative to the rate of reproduction. These factors would cause the deer population to decrease regardless of the deer's migration patterns, leading one to recognize that migration patterns may not be the sole cause of a decline in population.

The author's conclusion that declining arctic deer populations must be a result of disturbed migration patterns is flawed, due to the fact that it makes multiple unsubstantiated assumptions.

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

9 hours ago, Kylie Ashton said:

Nations should pass laws to preserve any remaining wilderness areas in their natural state, even if these areas could be developed for economic gain.

Write a response in which you discuss your views on the policy and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider the possible consequences of implementing the policy and explain how these consequences shape your position.

 

Due to the effects of urban development on the global climate, it would be beneficial for nations to pass laws which would preserve remaining wilderness areas.

Over the past few decades, it has become scientifically evident that the global climate has changed. Average temperatures have increased, resulting in a domino effect of environmental changes including melting ice caps, rising ocean levels, extreme flooding, and increasing rates of significant natural disasters. This elevated temperature level has been credited to air pollution caused by excess levels of carbon dioxide and diminished levels of oxygen; such carbon dioxide levels attack the atmospheric protective mechanism in place to shield the earth from the sun's intensity. By keeping the remaining wilderness areas as they are, the progression of air pollution would be either greatly reduced or, ideally, prevented entirely.

It is imperative to pass laws which would prevent the development of remaining wilderness areas because urbanizing such environmentally helpful regions would further worsen the global climate, which is already evidently on the decline. In eliminating the natural wildlife of these areas, trees would be removed, animals would be forced into new areas--with potentially entirely different climates to which they are not accustomed to-- and an influx of human behavior would take their place. An increased human population would bring with it a large number of buildings, but, more importantly, also a large number of cars. These cars, which emit carbon dioxide, would add to the already large imbalance between carbon dioxide and oxygen levels, thereby destroying the atmosphere that much more quickly. Ultimately, doing anything other than protecting and preserving the decreased amount of wilderness areas present will, in turn, harm our planet even further.

One may argue that developing such areas would benefit society, rather than harm it, as new development creates more jobs and sequentially improves the economy. With this perspective, new jobs will be created to construct the new buildings, to design and implement the new road systems, and maintain these additions over time. Furthermore, more jobs will be created in all of the business created in the new development. All of this, one could argue, would create jobs--improving the state of unemployment levels--as well as increase amounts of spending by creating new goods and services for the population to spend money on. However, this argument is insufficient in that it fails to recognize that the population of such a development would not be a brand new population, rather a supplanted population which came from another area; the latter would then experience decreased levels of spending and may be hurt by such a loss of population.

Nations should, in fact, pass laws which require the preservation of remaining wilderness areas because doing so would slow the present decline in the global climate, while failing to do so would directly catalyze this harmful progression.

Before I provide feedback on this essay, remember that I am NOT someone who grades GRE essays and therefore my evaluation should be taken with a grain of salt. 

I would rate this essay either a 3.5 or 4 based on the following description of these scores:

"Provides competent analysis of ideas; develops and supports main points with relevant reasons and/or examples; is adequately organized; conveys meaning with reasonable clarity; demonstrates satisfactory control of sentence structure and language usage, but may have some errors that affect clarity."

Some of your language use seems sloppy (ex. much more quickly) and I am personally not a fan of the dashed parenthetical. Your argument is sound, but I don't think you've thought through the nuances present. Based on the prompt, this is an argumentative essay so I was expecting to see a structure of: Introduction, Argument 1, Counter Argument, Argument 2, Conclusion. Rather than taking an all or nothing approach when choosing a side, try thinking through each side and seeing if there is a compromise in the middle that would allow for environmental protection while also instigating economic growth.