Search the Community

The following appeared as part of an article in the travel section of a newspaper: “Over the past decade, the restaurant industry in the country of Spiessa has experienced unprecedented growth. This surge can be expected to continue in the coming years, fueled by recent social changes: personal incomes are rising, more leisure time is available, single-person households are more common, and people have a greater interest in gourmet food, as evidenced by a proliferation of publications on the subject.” Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion. The article links the growth in restaurant industry in the country of Speissa to other important factors in the economy. The articles goes on to predict the continued growth on those factors for example: social changes like personal income rise, single person household getting increased and people having a greater interest in gourmet food, as evidenced by new publications on the subject, but the article fails to connect the cause and effect for the conclusion. Also the article fails to hold the ground that the expected changes are going to continue in the future. Firstly, The article did not mention the cause of surge in the restaurant industry for the last decade. It could be from tourism where the tourists from around the world contributed in restaurant surge and it might be over as some other place has been discovered. It could also be that government had a subsidy for entrepreneurs for restaurant business, which is why there was a surge rather than any of the mentioned reason. The article fails to make a direct relation between the conclusion to the various macro events going in the economy. Secondly, the author’s mention of social changes like publication of gourmet food publication could be because people had more free time and they want to make different and gourmet food themselves. This could be a reason for increased publication and not because people want to eat out. The article also fails to mention if the restaurant serve everyday menu, local or gourmet dishes as if the restaurants don’t serve gourmet food then again the publication of gourmet food articles is for other reasons than liked with surge in restaurant s in S. To summarize, the articles fails to connect the various reason to the conclusion directly so the argument could be substantiated. Lack of concrete evidence makes the argument flawed and the conclusion is unacceptable.

Hi everybody, this is the first 30min practice I've done for the Analyze an Issue part of the GRE, so any feedback at all would be sincerely appreciated :) Topic: Formal education tends to restrain our minds and spirits rather than set them free. We are all familiar with the adage "knowledge is power," and formal education, although oftentimes perceived as the bane of a student's existence, gives students the tools to expand their minds. The regimented style of formal education may seem on the surface to be stifling to freeing the mind. Studying each subject for a set number of hours, sitting for mandatory examinations, and being compelled to work on assignments after school all appear to be an unfavorable environment to mental growth. However, by requiring students to study in a variety of different subjects, formal education opens the doors for students to think broadly and critically in scope. Although sitting in a desk for eight hours a day may seem physically constraining, formal education can help nuture students' creativity and thirst for knowledge. It is a requirement of most schools that students take classes in a variety of subjects: sciences, including social science, language arts, foreign languages, to name a few. Although the institution of requirements may seem restraining in nature, by compelling students to study a plethora of topics schools expose students to many different concepts that they may not have seen before. In this fashion, schools introduce students to many different subjects and expand the minds. Formal education also involves a great deal of work outside of class by assigning homework. Although this practice is unfavorable with the majority of students, regimented practice helps students become more skillful in a topic. Once a student has acheived a base knowledge in a topic, they can take the initiative to explore beyond the basics and into new areas. The nation's greatest researchers were not able to question old schools of thought or think of new hypotheses without first having a solid knowledge of the basics. Galileo would not have been able to challenge Copernicus's invalid idea that the sun traveled around the earth had he not first been educated in the subject of astrology. By mandating that students gain knowledge in various subjects , formal education fosters critical thinking, a skill that is unattainable to the ignorant. This is not to say that formal education is the only possible method of producing inquisitive, critical-thinking individuals. There are many successful autodidates who reached prowess in their respectable fields without ascribing to formal education. The author Jorge Luis Borges, phycisist Michael Farraday, and painter and occassional engineer Leonardo Da Vinci are all good examples that formal education is not necessary to be successful in your field. However this is not a viable option for everyone. Not everyone can take the intitiative to pick up a task or a profession on their own, or has the resources to do this. The likelihood of a twelve-year-old dropping out of school and pushing themselves until they attain the position of a world class chemist is very slim. Thus, formal education allows every student an equal chance to shine.

Hello there and thank you in advance for your time and attention! I took my first practice exam today and my scores were 690-790 Quantitative and 300-400 Verbal, At the verbal section, I have seen some words that I've never seen in my life! :) If you could also share your thoughts about my first scores, that would be really really helpful for me. Thank you once again, Best wishes, Ethan, Over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increasingly more time to covering national news and less time to covering weather and local news. During the same time period, most of the complaints we received from viewers were concerned with the station's coverage of weather and local news. In addition, several local businesses that used to run advertisements during our late-night news program have just cancelled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to our news programs and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should expand the coverage of weather and local news on all our news programs. The author of the argument states that the reason of the decreasing advertising revenues and lower number of viewers is the short lenght of the weather and local news. The author provides a premise to support his argument. In this premise he states that the late-night news program used to keep the weather and local news longer in the past and they did not have any problems like the ones mentioned above. The argument of the author, who is the manager of the television stations, is poorly reasoned. The assumption of the argument do not depend on healthy evidences. Therefore the argument needs to be evaluated once again by considering some essential factors such as the type of the complaints and the economic situation of the local businesses. Firstly, there is not enough information about the type of the complaints. Maybe the viewers are happy with the lenght of the weather news but they are not happy with the person who presents this news or they want to see more detailed information about the local weather status. Since the weather news usually takes shorter time period, the reason does not have to be the lenght of the weather news. Furthermore, the author makes the same assumption for the local news. Maybe the late-night news program places the local news after the national news and this could be the main reason of the complaints. The viewers might just want to see the local news at the beginning of the late-night news program. Therefore more premises should have provided by the author to make a better argument. Secondly, author provides another premise related with the advertising contracts. He suggests that the local businesses cancel their advertising contracts because of the complaints of the viewers. One more time, this is not a strong premise. There could be a local economic recession and many local businesses could have to close downs their businesses. Then these local businesses would not have enough capital to support the late-night news program. There is no information related with the reason of the issue of the advertising contracts is given by the author of the argument. In sum, it could be said that the assumptions of the business manager of the television station are weak and poorly reasoned. The argument should be evaluated once again by the factors those mentioned above. In this way, a better and stronger argument can be developed by using more detailed premises.

Hello and thank you in advance for helping me during this tough journey :) I took my first GRE practice test a few hours before and here comes the analysis of an issue essay of mine, My scores were 690-790 for Quantitative and 300-400 for Verbal part. I am quite new in GRE and that would be also great if you could tell me your toughts about my scores. Does 690-790 mean that I will possibly get a score between 690 and 790? Thus I will probably get a score between 990 and 1190 for the entire exam? Thank you once again for your time and attention, Very best, Ethan A nation should require all of its students to study the same national curriculum until they enter college. The success, life quality and development of a nation depends on many essential factors. Education is one of the priority factors of these factors. If it is needed to consider well-developed countries, it can be easily seen that these countries invest most of their capital and resources on the quality of education. It is important for a nation to do its best to keep the quality of education as high as possible. To achieve this important task, it is important for that nation to have the right strategy for the curriculum. There are many types of potential occupations for the students and many more tend to appear soon. Therefore it is essential to provide variety of the courses for the students. In this way, a nation can have all required workforce for all the work types of the coming future. For instance, if you teach the same courses for all the high school students, they will have a pre-designed way of education which will automatically design their upcoming future career. In stead, these students should have the right of designing their own education and therefore designing their own future. In this way, a nation can meet its new Mozarts and Picassos. Furthermore, World is changing so quickly. The time period, from the elementary school to the college is such a long time. This time period takes more than 10 years. Many innovations, changes and developments can occur about World and life during this time period. When I enter to the high school, I was dreaming of becoming a lawyer in the future. Then when I graduated from the high school, I had so many difficulties to choose the right program to pursue my college education. The reason of this challenge was the variety of the new occupations. Right now, occupations such as social media marketing agents, life coaches, electronic game designers and event managers are very popular. However it is very hard to guess what other occupations will be popular in a few years. In sum, it can be said that to provide the same national curriculum for all the students until their college education is not the right strategy for a nation which wants to develop. This cirriculum should not be only designed by the educators, it should also be designed by the students and even by their families. Each student has its own talents and own features. To reach these talents, they should have the opportunutiy to try different things and to learn different subjects.

Topic: "As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more complex and mysterious." ESSAY: The statement here linking complexity to knowledge playson the experimentation of humans with the strangeness of nature from thefarthest past as we know it. Since ancient times man has been curious about thenature around him. From the invention of wheel till the modern day nuclear weapons,man has been moving forward in the field of science. It is true that when one question isanswered, it gives rise to a number of other questions and so it can be saidthat the field of science is becoming further complex as time passes, but ifone has the true knowledge of the subject, the science becomes simpler. Even inthe midst of complexity, it will be wrong in our part to tell that it becomesincomprehensible. Considering the field of medicine, in olden days,there were no proper doctors. People relied on so called “witch doctors” tocure them of the disease, which rarely happened. The medicine to which thepatients were treated, especially in the time when “Black Death” was sweepingEurope is a very good example of the backwardness in the people’s knowledge ofmedicine. The so called “doctors” were at a loss in understanding what wasreally happening in the human body and so in the place of curing it they wouldunintentionally put the patient’s life in danger. Whereas today with theadvancement of knowledge, even though it has led us to many other mysteries inthe human body, it has given us more understanding of the human body than theolden days leading to better healthcare, eradication of dangerous diseases like small pox etc. Even in the field of astronomy, where people used towonder about stars and the lights of the sky has all become clearer due to ourincrease in the knowledge of it. Many of the false superstitions from pastwhich was due to our lack of knowledge in the actual working of nature has beenbanished from the society due to our clearer knowledge of the actual happeningsin the system, which in turn has made our life a lot more meaningful. As the saying goes, “knowledge is power”, It is truethat as we advance, and gain more knowledge more doors of mysterious questionspop up and question our intellectuality, but it has given us more understandingof the human life as we know it thus broadening our horizons and not narrowingit.