Ashley Shan

If you want me to read your essay, please reply with your post's link. Many thanks, and good luck! This is a Magoosh question: SuperCorp recently moved its headquarters to Corporateville. The recent surge in the number of homeowners in Corporateville proves that Corporateville is a superior place to live then Middlesburg, the home of SuperCorp's current headquarters. Moreover, Middleburg is a predominately urban area and according to an employee survey, SuperCorp has determined that its workers prefer to live in an area that is not urban. Finally, Corporateville has lower taxes than Middlesburg, making it not only a safer place to work but also a cheaper one. Therefore, Supercorp clearly made the best decision. 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 the assumptions and what the implications are if the assumptions prove unwarranted. My response: While SuperCorp's recent relocation may or may not be a good decision for the company, the reasons outlined in the argument are not sufficient to prove the advantages of this relocation. The argument makes several questionable assumptions that are not supported in the prompt, and the author will need to provide more background information to prove her point. First of all, a surge in the number of homeowners in Corporateville does not necessarily prove that Corporateville is a superior place to live than Middlesburg. The surge could be caused by many reasons: these homeowners may come from a nearby town recently attacked by a disastrous earthquake and may purchase these homes in Corporateville with government assistance; the surge might be caused by recent gentrification of the city or an influx of foreign refugees or immigrants. In other words, the increase in homeowners in Corporateville doesn't mean that these homeowners move to Corporateville based on free choice. In that case, Corporateville may be their last or only choice, and this mass relation does not necessarily entail the conclusion that Corporateville is a superior place to live than Middlesburg. If this is the case, then SuperCorp may have relocated to an area with low purchase capacity, and the decision is not advantageous to the company's growth. Furthermore, even if that Corporateville, by whatever measurement, is a superior place to live than Middlesburg, this does not necessarily mean that Corporateville is a better place to do business for SuperCorp. Sure, if SuperCorp sells furnitures or house-ware, being located at an Corporateville may be a better decision. However, what if SuperCorp is a heavy-industry factory, such as a car company? In this case, the relocation of SuperCorp is actually not wise for the company's profit, because heavy industries tend to cause lots of air pollution and noise in the neighborhood and decreases the living conditions of the neighborhood. If homeowners of Corporateville are disturbed by these pollution or noise issues, SuperCorp will have to spend a considerable amount of money on lawsuits, and the company's public image is irreparably damaged. In addition, lower taxes in Corporateville does not mean that it's cheaper for SuperCorp to operate there than in Middlesburg. On one hand, the argument is unclear about the type and degree of taxes in Middlesburg and in Corporateville. Is the decrease in tax sufficient to make up for the cost of relocation? Are the taxes generally lower, or are there only certain few types of taxes are lower in Corporateville? We simply don't know. Hence, the lower level of taxes, as indicated in the argument, does not necessarily benefit the corporation. On the other hand, even though that the taxes in Corporateville is generally lower than those in Middlesburg, there might be other aspects that make doing business in Corporateville more expensive than in Middlesburg. For example, the labor cost or cost of raw materials may be higher in Corporateville than in Middlesburg, which outweigh the benefits of low tax levels in Corporateville. In this case, SuperCorp's relocation to Corporateville is a financially unwise decision. In summary, the three points mentioned in the argument are not sufficient to prove the advantages of SuperCorp's relocation to Corporateville. The increasing number of homeowners, supposedly relatively superior living conditions, and "lower" tax levels are not enough to make Corporateville a better place to do business for SuperCorp than does Middlesburg. Without more detailed and complete analyses of the two places, we can't make the point that SuperCorp's relocation is a good decision.

I'd really appreciate if you can give me some feedback... this is my first argument essay. Question: Woven baskets characterized by a particular distinctive pattern have previously been found only in the immediate vicinity of the prehistoric village of Palea and therefore were believed to have been made only by the Palean people. Recently, however, archaeologists discovered such a "Palean" basket in Lithos, an ancient village across the Brim River from Palea. The Brim River is very deep and broad, and so the ancient Paleans could have crossed it only by boat, and no Palean boats have been found. Thus it follows that the so-called Palean baskets were not uniquely Palean. 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. Response: While it is unclear whether the “Palean” baskets are unique to the prehistoric village of Palea, the argument does not persuasively connect the discovery of a Palean basket in Lithos to the fact that the so-called Palean baskets were not uniquely Palean. There are a variety of reasons why a Palean basket could be found in Lithos, and they don’t necessarily challenge the supposed geographical origin of the Palean baskets. The author noted that Lithos, the ancient village where the Palean basket was found, is across the Brim River from Palea. However, the fact that the Brim River is very deep and broad now does not necessarily mean that it was deep and broad in the time of the Palean culture. The Brim River might be shallow or even non-existent at the time of Palea, and Palean residents might have been able to easily travel across what is now the Brim River. Therefore, the fact that there’s no Palean boats found around the Brim River could well be an evidence that ancient Palean residents did not need boats to travel across the river. The author will have to provide evidence that the Brim River has been in between Lithos and Palea since the time of Palean culture to make the point that it could be a significant obstacle for travel. Additionally, even though the Brim River has always been deep and broad since the time of the Paleans, the assumption that ancient Paleans would have to cross it by boat is unconvincing. On one hand, the argument provided little information about the geography surrounding Palea and Lithos. If there is a nearby place where the Brim River is shallow and narrow, or if the flow of the river is seasonal, it is likely that the Paleans might be able to travel from Palea to Lithos. Since we do not know how the geographies surrounding Lithos and Palea look like, we can’t eliminate the possibility that ancient Paleans could travel to Lithos without boats. Finally, even if the Brim River has always been deep and broad and that the Paleans had no other way to reach Lithos except for by boats, the discovery of only one Palean basket in Lithos does not constitute a strong challenge to existing researches about the Palean baskets origin. Given that the majority of Palean baskets are found in Palea and only one in Lithos, which is in the vicinity of Palea, it is well likely that that one basket was dropped into the Brim River and was carried by water to the other side. Unless a significant number of Palean baskets are found outside of the village of Palea, we couldn’t be sure that the discovery of one or two Palean baskets in a certain area indicates the production of Palean baskets in that area too. Granted, the discovery of Palean baskets outside of the village of Palea might challenge existing beliefs of the origin of this type of basket and shed new light on archeological researches on ancient Palea. However, the connection between one Palean basket’s discovery in Lithos and suspicions about the type of basket’s origin as presented by the author is weak. We will need more background information and further researches to determine if the Palean baskets are unique to Palea.

Hi Jared, Thanks for commenting on my essay. I really appreciate your help. Overall, I really like your essay. I only have one suggestion: I feel your warrant is not very strong. Warrant is the link between your evidence and your argument. For example, in the second paragraph, you talked about how printing press has allowed us to be "where we are today." Then, in the next sentence, instead of talking about how has printing press contributes to humanity (for example, by allowing us to delegate some repetitive duties, and you can expand on what kind of duties have been delegated), you generalized your argument and presented a very abstract statement (Humans are capable of delegating these tiresome and petty tasks to machines and technology in order to spend their time elsewhere; ideally in a more productive manner). The same issue occurred in your DNA sequencing example. After talking about how In the old days, sequencing was carried out one base pair at a time; a feat that took years to accomplish with the help of several scientific labs across the world, I would expect you to talk about how DNA sequencing technology has freed us from these mundane tasks and focus on more complicated issues, but again, your next sentence makes me feel you did not expand on this point completely. I know that the warrant part seems silly and unnecessary, but it makes your paragraphs flow better. Thanks again, and good luck with your test! Mine is on July 18th. Ashley

Hi y'all, this is my first GRE practice essay and my first time posting in this forum. I'd really appreciate if anyone can take a brief look of my essay and give me some suggestions. I'm planning to take the test at the end of the summer. Thanks! --- As people rely more and more on technology to solve problems, the ability of humans to think for themselves will surely deteriorate. Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position. The statement provides a biased perspective on the role of technology in the modern world. Admittedly, reliance on technical products like calculators may have made us unaccustomed to calculate manually. However, technology allows us to engage in more important and challenging questions facing the humanity by freeing us from mundane problem solving and raising more complex questions in the society. The development of geospatial technology well exemplifies how technology, by solving mechanical, tedious problems for humans, allows us to focus on more complicated and fundamental issues in society. Before the invention of computers and advent of geospatial technologies, geographers had to walk around an area and manually draw maps. These maps are inaccurate and redundant. Since geographers from different regions have limited, if any, communication with each other, and old maps are rarely carefully and completely preserved, geographers can’t share maps, nor building on existing maps that are of dubious qualities. Geospatial technology, however, generates a much more accurate and complete image of the earth and allows geographers of different regions and expertise to work together, therefore freeing us to engage in more complicated problems. Nowadays, it’s not uncommon for people to integrate maps of income distributions with maps of racial composition, thus showing trends of income inequality between people of different races. Therefore, modern geographers, freed from the mundane and inefficient task of drawing inaccurate maps, can play with their data and identify social, political and economic trends in a particular region. On the other hand, technology itself, viewed from a different perspective, becomes the source of problems in modern societies. In America, factory farms that use biochemical technology to mass-produce animals by alternating their natural life circle and growth have raised extensive ethical and health debates. The exponential development of the Internet, while connecting people from around the globe, raises concerns for lease of personal information and cyber-bullying. A more classical example is the Nazis, whose genocide could never have been so efficiently conveyed without the latest biochemical technology of the date. In these situations, the balance between technology and humanity requires us human beings to think more critically about our society and develop creative solutions to harness technology. The debates and concerns centered on technology poses serious ethical challenges to the contemporary society, and we humans have to take these challenges critically to preserve and foster the development of modern society. In conclusion, the statement posed above offers a partial view on the relationship between technology and humanity. In a broader sense, technology is a collective term for all attempts by human beings to become independent from natural conditions: agricultural advances secured food and communities for primitive humans and thus set the foundation for the development of human societies, and invention of paper allowed us to preserve knowledge and memories. Therefore, the advancement of humanity is inseparable from the technical advances. In this sense, the statement seems to imply that we should all go back to primitive societies when there’s no technology at all, in which, heavily dependent upon the mercy of natural phenomena, human beings simply do not have enough time nor intelligence to “think for themselves."