Alexiel17

Hi everyone, I'm new to the forums, I'm going to take my second GRE to apply to grad school as an international student. In my first take, I got a 3 in my AWA section, which is why I want to re-take it and improve it. Any correction, comment or critique is welcomed. Please be strict! 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 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. Dr. Karp’s conclusion in his article, about Tertia’s children rearing, claims that his method and results are better than those of Dr. Field, 20 years ago, and thus, invalidating Dr. Field’s research and methods. Meaning that the interview-centered approach that Dr. Karp uses to study cultures in these islands is more accurate to understand the child-rearing traditions of them. First of all, Dr. Karp does not provide what questions he used in the interview with the children. If the questions were about his parents or nuclear family, the answers would be obviously about them, making Dr. Karp’s point stronger, but untrue. He needs to present those questions to see if they were inclined to the parents or were varied. Dr. Karp also fails to support why he says that Dr. Field’s observations are invalid, if the children speak more of their parents, does not mean that the village did not rear the children, when it might just be because the children would be closer to their progenitors. Also, Dr. Karp says that his interview-centered method of research is better than the observation-centered approach that Dr. Field used. But he does not present the possible flaws it could have, such as that in interviews people tend to think more their answers and are affected by the interviewer attitude, while when you observe them, they behave more naturally. If Dr. Karp provided the evidence that observation affects the behavior of the people being observed, and the interviews does not affect the authenticity of their answers, it would make Dr. Karp’s point stronger. Finally, Dr. Karp ignores the difference in the culture of the Island 20 years ago from the one that exists now. Maybe difference in results occurs because the Tertia’s society is very different than it was when Dr. Field made his study. Dr. Karp should consider both approaches in the same research, and compare results to verify if the methods do actually provide different conclusions or if it all was because of the change Tertia’s society suffered over time. In conclusion, when Dr. Karp takes all these points into consideration, one could assume his results are more valid than the ones he originally presented without such evidence.