Please help me grade my Analyze an Issue essay :D

[Bowen Chen]

Hi all,

Could you please help me grade and provide some feedback for my first attempt of an issue essay? Thanks a lot !

 

 

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.

 

--------------------------

Education is an integral component of a student’s successful career. Though each individual learns differently, there is always a question being raised about the best way of teaching. Over the years, many consider the most effective way for an individual to learn is to applause every positive steps he takes while place minimum emphasis on the negative ones. Even though it is natural to think that way, I cannot 100% champion this idea – I consider some positive actions needs to encouraged, but all negative ones needs to be handled with care rather than plainly ignored.

 

Students always wants to achieve for more successes, but there are cases that they are achieving them by utilizing the wrong practices – and those actions cannot be left alone. To be more specific, a student who wants to get a high mark on his assignments may choose to plagiarize the model or sample assignments. While plagiarizing is a serious fault, the student might just not realize it, or doing this on purpose just to beautify his results. Nevertheless, ignoring his plagiarism would be absurd and irresponsible. Now since ignoring the negative actions can allow the negativity to persist, leading to even more severe faults in the future. Just because those negative actions were never stopped, the student can easily treat bullying another student as “acceptable” since they never were instructed to realize the consequences. Instead, for an educator, these negative behaviors need to be terminated since inception to preclude further damages. The educator should patiently talk to the student who committed the fault, make him realize the consequences and work closely in helping him correct those negative actions.

 

I do believe majority, but not all, positive actions and results deserve a round-of-applause. Some spurs on the students will also result in a better performance in the future. As far as praises provide students more confidence and motivation to keep up the good work, constant embellishment will prevent students from realizing the room of improvements. For instance, a student who was able to crown over the school wide math competition can have his moment of fame, and being praised by his classmates, parents and teachers. However, overly endorse him, such as calling him “the best mathematician in the country” can just do more harm than good. Depending on the level of competition, simply winning the competition in school cannot imply his superiority over other candidates if they are to participate in a nation-wide math competition. Instead, I consider some tough love the best way to response to this student. The educator needs to focus assisting the student to revisit the competition and mark down the student’s strengths and weaknesses for future reference. The student should also work diligently on improving those areas. By doing so, the most effective teaching is achieved. The student’s potential is indeed maximized.

 

In short, even though praising is necessary for a student to build confidence, constantly praising is not the best way of teaching. Instead, a combination of praise and spur, even warnings, should be applied depends on specific situations. By praising the actions that truly deserves a praise, offer tough loves to the ones that has further potential to realize, while warning those severe negative actions, the educators have conducted their due diligence and utilized the full effect of teaching

 

 

 

[hattrick]

I would rate this a 3-3.5! You have good structure but your essay is very verbose. Because it is verbose, I bet you were limited with time and hence could only give 2 examples. A 4 and over will have at least 3 examples. (some may disagree).

 

Beyond that, your first example is lengthy and doesn't get to the point. Plagiarism was a bad example to give. It can never and will never have a positive response. You could have given another better example. i.e. constructive criticism, pro athlete, lebron james etc.

[SiGuy]

I am practicing for the GRE AWA myself now. I believe this is somewhere between a "3" and a "4". I found some grammatical errors in this essay such as "needs to encouraged".

 

As Hattrick mentioned, your essay has good structure and organization.

[SiGuy]

I agree with Hattrick that there is too much redundancy here. It also helps to include GRE vocabulary words in your essay. Having sophisticated vocabulary is not as important as structure and content but will help your score. Specific examples are an important part of content that will help your score. One example is:

 

"The student should also work diligently on improving those areas. By doing so, the most effective teaching is achieved. The student’s potential is indeed maximized."

 

This is an example of how this could be written in a more concise manner with some GRE words and a specific example:

 

When teachers work sedulously to explain to students their mistakes in detail, the student will learn effectively. For instance, the student got the algebra problem "simplify ((x+3)/(x+3))*(5x) when x can equal -3" wrong during the math competition because he canceled out (x+3) in the numerator and the denominator. The teacher explained that this is wrong because (-3+3)/(-3+3)=0/0 and 0/0 is an undefined value in mathematics. The student diligently reviewed this mistake and correctly answered this question during the next round of the math competition.

 

Edited August 14, 2016 by SiGuy

[SiGuy]

More information about the AWA portion of the GRE test: https://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/analytical_writing

[Bowen Chen]

Thank you for the response.

[Bowen Chen]

Thank you for your example. I think I need to be more specific here right? The examples I gave are more like claims instead of support. This is very helpful !

[SiGuy]

Yes.More specific examples would help (like specific events that are relevant). They can even be examples from pop culture or television. They don't necessarily have to be strictly "scholarly" examples.

[SiGuy]

I am practicing for the GRE AWA right now and could use some constructive criticism of my essays my self.

[hattrick]

Thank you for your example. I think I need to be more specific here right? The examples I gave are more like claims instead of support. This is very helpful !

 

Bowen, yes you need to be specific. For example, if I give you a statement like: To be successful one has to have a college degree. You have to pick a side, give merits to one school of thought and then state within that example if you agree or disagree with it. Be coherent and to the point. Don't go off on a tangent. Also, I think people get too held up with using GRE words and they mostly use it in the wrong context as illustrated by your essay. I would rather you write with good structure and good examples and get a 4 or 4.5 rather than use words that don't really fit the picture.

 

Hope that helps!