Crunchprep Com GRE Analytical Writing Guide

Chapters
The Advanced Guide to

GRE Analytical Writing
71 Mind-Blowing Tips, Techniques, and Strategies
to Score a Perfect 6.0 on the AWA
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Written By Jitta & Sachin
CHAPTER 1
Introduction to GRE Analytical

Writing
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Getting to know everything about the writing section

on the GRE will not only fetch you a perfect score, but
also help you become a better writer
Getting a 99 percentile score on either of Verbal and Quant sections on the

GRE requires several weeks, if not months, of diligence, patience, practice,
and smart prep. But with only a fraction of the hard work you put in for
Math and Verbal, and just a few days of practice, you can easily get a 99
percentile score on the AWA section. Plus, getting a 6.0 on the AWA isnt a
regular occurrence, and only about 8000 test takers around the world do it
every year. So, if you can be one of those guys, you will be famous not only
among your friends, but also among the admissions committees.
Unfortunately, the AWA is the most neglected section on the GRE. Test
takers across the world believe that they can easily master AWA in a day or
two. And look at what they end up with: The average AWA score of a GRE
test taker worldwide is a mere 4.0, and the average AWA score of an
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Indian test taker is even lower. Now, to most Indian students, getting a 4.0
on the AWA might seem like an impressive feat. But in reality, 4.0 is
considered just average in most countries. And on top of it, getting a 6.0
isnt really as tough as it seems. It is only that you dont know how.
If you are looking to score a perfect 6.0 on the AWA section, you will have
to be a lot more planned than most other students. Just as with the Verbal
and Quant sections, mastering the essay section on the GRE requires the
same amount of confidence, persistence, and practice. And in addition to
all that, you will also need a solid guide that can help you with all the
strategies and tips. You will need an AWA Bible, so to speak.
But sadly enough, there isnt much useful information on the internet
about this frequently neglected section. Yes, there are some good articles
and sample 6.0 essays that you can get with a simple Google search, but
nowhere on the internet is a definitive guide to help you write a 6.0 essay
on the GRE. And that is why, we at CrunchPrep, decided to provide you
with a complete, advanced guide to scoring a perfect 6.0 on the AWA. And
hey, dont blame us if the 6.0 percentile goes down from 99 to 80 soon.
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What is the AWA all about?

The Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) portion of the GRE consists of
two essays, each of which you will need to write in 30 minutes or less. The
two essays you will see on the GRE are, Analysis of an Issue and Analysis
of an Argument. These two essays will always come first on your GRE test,
no matter what. You cannot simply skip off AWA, move on to the other
sections, and come back later. AWA itself is a separate section, and only
after you finish writing the two essays can you move on further.
Despite what most students say, you should remember that the AWA only
tests how well you can write an essay, and hence measures only your
writing abilities. Contrary to popular opinion, the AWA does not analyze
your thought process. As long as your essay sounds logical, writing ability
is all it measures. We will be discussing more about this in the upcoming
sections.
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How important is the AWA?

It is a widely known fact that your AWA essay score is not as important as
your composite math and verbal score on the GRE, and getting a 5.0 or 6.0
wont make or break your chances of getting admitted to the university of
your choice. Graduate school admissions officers only bother about your
AWA score, if it is too low, or significantly lower than their usual class
average. Yes, a poor score on the AWA can definitely send up a red flag,
and the admissions committee will certainly think twice before letting you
in. Sometimes, they even go to the extent of rereading your SOP and
LORs, to find out if they were actually written by you or someone else. So,
it is rather safe to say that the AWA score is an important enough factor
when it comes to admissions.
What is the score range for AWA?

The AWA score ranges between 0 and 6.0, with 0.5 point increments. But
what exactly does it mean to get a 6.0, or 4.0 or for that matter, a 0 on the
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AWA? Well, the scoring system is designed in a way that your responses to
each of these essay questions are scored on a 6-point scale, with 6 being
the highest score and 1, the lowest. Given below, are the parameters that
ETS looks at when grading your AWA essays:
6.0 Outstanding:
A well-articulated critique of the argument/issue, demonstrating mastery
of effective writing, and displaying the following characteristics:
Clearly identifies and analyzes the most important features of the
argument with deep insight.
Develops cogent ideas, organizes them logically, and connects
them properly without sudden transitions.
Supports the main points of the critique strongly.
Demonstrates superior control of the English language, including
diction, sentence formation, spelling, grammar and syntactic
variety used in standard written English.
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Few to no flaws in the essay.
5.0 Strong
A well-developed critique of the argument, demonstrating good control of
writing, and displaying the following characteristics:
Clearly identifies the important features of the argument and
analyzes them thoughtfully.
Develops ideas clearly, and connects them logically, with
appropriate transitions.
Gives a very sensible support to the main points of the critique.
Has clear control of language, including diction and syntactic
variety
May have minor flaws like spelling errors, but no major flaws.
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4.0 Adequate
A satisfactory critique of the given argument, demonstrating decent
control of writing, and displaying the following characteristics:
Capable of Identifying and analyzing the main features of the
argument.
Develops and organizes ideas satisfactorily, but some important
connections and transitions may be missing.
Supports the main points of the critique.
Demonstrates sufficient control of language, but may lack
syntactic variety.
May have many minor flaws or some major flaws.
3.0 Limited
A satisfactory essay with clearly flawed critique of the argument,
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demonstrating little control of the elements of writing, and displaying the

following characteristics:
Does not identify or analyze many of the important features of
the argument.
Has limited logical development and no proper organization of
ideas.
Offers support of little relevance and value for points of the
critique
Uses language imprecisely and/or lacks sentence variety
Contains occasional major errors or frequent minor errors in
grammar, usage, and mechanics
2.0 Seriously Flawed

An unsatisfactory essay with serious weakness in analytical writing skills,
and displaying the following characteristics:
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Demonstrates no understanding of the main features of the

argument.
Almost no analyses of the main points have been made.
Does not develop any ideas or is disorganized
Provides nil to few relevant evidences.
Has frequent serious problems in the use of language, grammar,
spelling, and sentence structure.
1.0 Fundamentally Decient

An essay full of fundamental deficiencies in analytical writing skills, and
displaying the following characteristics:
Provides little to no evidence of the ability to understand and
analyze the main idea.
Failure to develop an organized response.
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Contains severe and persistent errors in language and sentence

structure
Has an unusually frequent pattern of errors in grammar, usage,
and logic.
A totally incoherent response.
0.0 Unscorable
A paper that is totally illegible or obviously not written on the assigned
topic. A score of zero is given to responses that come under one of the
following cases:
The responses are off topic.
The responses are written in a language other than English.
The responses are a mere copy of the given topic.
The responses consist only of random keystroke characters.
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No response.
So, it is safe to say that if you write at least a few sentences in English, you
will get a score of 1.0. But rest assured, no university under the sun will
accept a score that low.
How is the AWA graded?

Each of your AWA essays is scored on a scale of 0 to 6. Two readers will
read your Issue essay and assign it a deserving score and two different
readers will read your Argument essay and assign it a score. Each grader
will award a 6.0 to the top essays and scores of 0 are reserved for essays
written on topics other than the one assigned or written in a foreign
language. The graders spend about 30 seconds to 2 minutes on each essay,
and give it a score based on pre-defined evaluation metrics such as the
overall quality of your critical thinking and writing, as mentioned
previously. The graders who evaluate the responses are college and
university faculty members from various subject matter areas, including
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university faculty members from various subject matter areas, including

higher education.
Once the readers finish grading your essay, the two scores will be averaged
to arrive at a final AWA score. If the grades given by the two readers differ
by more than a point, a third, highly experienced grader is brought in to
resolve the discrepancy (i.e., determine your final score for that essay).
For each essay, your final score is the average of the scores assigned by the
two readers or the adjusted score assigned by the third reader.
Heres how a typical Analytical Writing score might be derived:
If you earned scores of 6 and 5 on the Analysis of an Issue, then your final
score for the Issue essay would be the average of these two i.e., (6 + 5) /2
which equals to 5.5 and if you earned scores of 4 and 5 on the Analysis of
an Argument, your final score on the Argument essay would be (4 + 5) /2
which equals to 4.5.
Your final AWA score will be the average of your scores on Issue and
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Argument essays i.e., (5.5 + 4.5) /2 which equals to 5, which will be your
final AWA score.
It should be noted that though your AWA scores range from 0 6, about
90 percent of all scores fall between 2 and 5. The average score for the
AWA section for all the test takers so far is around 4.2.
Your Analytical Writing Assessment scores are computed and reported
separately from the multiple-choice sections of the test and have no effect
on your Verbal, Quantitative, or Total scores. Your score report however
will not include copies of your responses; only scores are sent. You will
receive your essay scores approximately 10-15 days after your test date.
What do graders look for in your AWA essays?

Most students think that essay length the only important factor when it
comes to AWA scoring. But, in reality, it is not. Of course, it is one of the
most important factors, but it isnt the only factor. You will have to
take many other factors into consideration, if you are looking to get
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anywhere near the perfect score. We have complied a list of all the factors
that affect your overall AWA score, so you can be well prepared, while
improving your writing skills on those lines.
The 7 Elements Graders Look For:

1. Clarity
This is the most important, and also the most fundamental of all factors
that the graders judge your essays on. The grader should understand what
you are trying to say, by reading once. This makes their job easier, and they
will understand that if it can be understood with just a single reading, then
your essay has clarity.
As we discussed earlier, the grader can spend a maximum of only two
minutes per essay, and it is your duty to make sure your essays have clearly
composed ideas, because more often than not, graders do not bother to
reread your essay and waste another couple of minutes. Consequently, you
will end up with a score much lower than what you actually deserve.
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Ask yourselves these two questions when you are writing the essays. What
are you trying to say? Whats your main point? These two questions must
have solid answers by the time the grader finishes reading the essay. If you
think about it, these are the exact same questions you will have to answer,
during Reading Comprehension. Just like how you can easily solve a
Reading Comprehension question if you have answers to those two
questions, graders assessing your essay will also need to find answers to
these exact same questions, if you need a perfect score. Substance matters
more than any other factor when it comes to your essays. So, make sure
you have solid points, and clear logical reasoning that can be easily
understood.
2. Structure
You should have seen it coming; structure is the second most important
factor on your essays. The way an article is formatted, has a massive
impact upon its readability. Your essays should read like a story;
something that can be easily understood, and something that has a proper
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structure and organization. So, it is important that you break up your essay
into distinct paragraphs, each with its own meaning and context, while
maintaining a smooth transition between one paragraph and the next.
This way, every paragraph reads like a separate story, and the essay
graders can easily scan through your entire response easily. Plus, since the
transitions are smooth, and there arent any sudden twists in your
response, it will make the graders job a whole lot easier.
So, ideally, you should have a structure in mind before you begin writing
the essay. The general structure is to start with an introductory paragraph
followed by 3-4 body paragraphs and finish off with a conclusion
paragraph. So, you should make sure that there are at least 5-6 paragraphs
in your essay, if you want a solid score on the AWA.
3. Sentence Variety
Even though you are writing several paragraphs on the same topic, you
should ideally avoid writing similar or same sentences. If you are an avid
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reader of news, you get the point. No good writer under the sun writes two
exactly same sentences in a single essay or article. Consecutive sentences
with the same structure and length can sound monotonous and lifeless,
and will obviously bore the reader.
Instead of sounding repetitive and boring, use sentence style skillfully. But
this doesnt mean you should rearrange the words, or chance the voice
from passive to active or vice versa. It simply means that you should use a
different variety of words to mean the same thing.
For example, if you have already written the sentence The most important
virtue of a leader is a strong sense of ethics., and if you have to use the
same sentence at a later point in the essay, you should try and rephrase
that same sentence and write something like this: A strong moral
framework is paramount for any leader. Get the point?
In this way, you should keep varying the sentence structures, flow and
rhythm by switching between short and long sentences. You should also
make use of transitional and signal words to vary sentence openings and
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endings.
4. Vocabulary
There has been a longstanding myth among test takers that the GRE really
loves heavy vocabulary, and using it on your AWA essays will boost your
score. Well, this isnt true at all. We have seen students with exceptional
vocabulary but poor coherence get paltry AWA scores in the past. And we
have seen students with great essay scores without using heavy
vocabulary.
Like we said earlier, the AWA is not testing how much vocab you have in
your arsenal. Theres Sentence Equivalence and Text Completion for that.
AWA only tests how logically you can deduce information and write a
reasonable critique about an issue or an argument made by someone else.
So, dont buy those myths. As long as you use sensible reasoning, proper
grammar and as long as you can defend your point intelligently and use
precise vocabulary to convey meaning effectively, you should be alright. It
is not needed that you use heavy vocabulary or GRE words.
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5. Language and Grammar

Though officially ETS says you may have minor errors in the essay copy,
that doesnt mean you can ignore silly mistakes. Even though the mistakes
or errors do not interfere with overall meaning and coherence, you should
understand that the time you make your first error on the essay, the grader
will notice it, and will be more conscious while reading the rest of the copy.
The grader will be even more vigilant to see if there are any visible or
obvious blunders that you have made, and this can have a negative impact
on your AWA score. So, try and make sure your essay is as spotless as
possible, and eliminate all errors before submitting. Take time to
proofread your essay, once you finish writing it. Dont be in a hurry to
submit it off and skip to the next section.
6. Reasoning
Reasoning plays a key role in determining the overall quality of your essay.
You should always look to include as many logically compelling reasons as
you can to support your stance. One of the most important features about
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a compelling essay is its ability to convince the reader by means of sound

logical reasoning. Anyone who reads your response should be totally
convinced of your view point, without having second thoughts. To be able
to write such a compelling and well-reasoned copy within 30 minutes
would be rather difficult, but you can definitely do it with a lot of practice.
So ideally, you should be able to connect your ideas properly to the central
theme or idea of the essay, and convince the reader to agree to your point
of view. If the essay doesnt sound logical or reasonable, you will
unfortunately have to pay the penalty, no matter how long the essay is.
7. Evidence
In order to make your essay sound reasonable and logically sound, you will
obviously need to provide sufficient evidences. If you want to impress the
readers, and convince them to agree to your point of view, you will ideally
want to provide convincing evidence to back up your thesis. Search for
evidences, either direct or implied, and connect them with the essay. You
can even create some random examples and evidences, as long as they fit
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the bill and dont sound too random. Develop examples that cogently
reinforce your thesis is key to a high essay score.
So, those are the 7 most important elements that graders look for in your
essays. Make sure you have all these things covered in your essay, and
youre sure to see a perfect score.
Should you skip the AWA section during practice?

This is probably a question that is on the minds of many students. Almost
half of the GRE test takers are native English speakers. And these students
tend to neglect practicing the AWA section at home, because according to
them, its not worth investing time on something they are very confident
about. But, there are a few vital points that they dont realize. Weve
observed what students do when they practice for the GRE, how their
approaches have affected their scores on test day, and figured out four
reasons as to why the AWA section is an extremely important aspect of the
GRE exam.
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Number 1 Reason Why Practicing GRE AWA is Important: Inated

Scores During Practice:
This is the single most important thing to consider when we talk about the
importance of the essay section. Students normally tend to skip the essay
section when they take practice tests, so they can directly go to the first
section of Math/Verbal. Though this might seem like the obvious choice to
you, you should consider the aftereffects before jumping into conclusions.
Think about it. The GRE is not a typical test that you encounter at college
or elsewhere. It is a marathon. An intense, 3 hour 45 minute journey,
which obviously you arent accustomed to. Now, if you skip the essay
section during practice, youll be forfeiting 60 minutes of the total test
time, which means you are going to have to sit for 2 hours and 45 minutes
only.
This translates into an inflated overall score during practice, because you
are just that much more active than you will be on test day. So, you get
accustomed to sitting for 2 hours 45 minutes for the test, and your brain is
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hardwired to concentrate for that much time only. But, on test day, you
still have two more sections to finish after you complete 2 hours and 45
minutes.
Do you get the point? Its that extra one hour of concentration that
requires sudden attention from your brain, which it sadly isnt ready for.
This is exactly why thousands of students score very low on their last two
to three sections. They simply arent ready for the extra time, because their
brains feel tired already. So, if you dont skip the essay during practice,
youll be writing in the exact test conditions as on test day, thereby training
your brain for the big encounter.
There are a few other important reasons why you should not skip off
AWA during practice, and we have discussed them separately.
How Long Should My Essay Be?

The essay graders are aware that you only get 30 minutes to write each
AWA essay and they also know that you wont be able to cover every
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possible argument, reason and rebuttal. Hence they do not expect you to
write a super long detailed analysis of the issue or argument given to you.
Remember that most GRE test takers wont be able to find time to cover
everything they would like to cover on the test.
So, how long should your AWA essay be? We see students wondering
about this all the time and we know you would like to know about it too.
ETS has not spoken out about the ideal length of an essay, and there is no
word on the word limit as such. But there seems to be a pattern that
appears on GRE sample essays that come along with the ETS official guide
to the GRE.
When closely observed, there is a significant increase in the number of
words from a 5.0 graded essay and a 6.0 graded essay. The reality is,
longer essay is usually better. To analyze further on this topic, we have
done a bit of research, and found out an interesting relation between essay
length and the final score. If you look at the statistics below, you will have
to concur with me. Longer essays usually score better on every essay topic.
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If you are a long-essay fan and insist to pen a high scoring AWA essay on
the GRE, you should write anywhere between 500-600 words. Dont ask
us why. The research shows thats how it is, and if it true for a sample of
500 students, it must be true on a larger scale as well.
A column chart with average word count for essays from 500
students
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As you can see, the longer the essay, the higher the grades. Notice that a 5+
point essay has length exceeding 500 words. Another interesting fact is, it
seems as if 600 is an upper limit for word count. If you go beyond 600
words, you can see how the scores go down. This isnt surprising, though.
Almost no student on this planet can write a perfect 800 word essay under
pressure in 30 minutes. If someone is shooting for a high word count, they
are surely sacrificing on quality. So, its safe to say that 500-600 is what
you should be looking at.
If youd like to know more about the GRE essay length, weve done a
separate post on that. Go check it out now.
Categorization of GRE Essay Topics

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The most fascinating thing about the GRE essay section is that each and
every essay topic that shows up on the real test is already published on the
official ETS website. This may sound crazy because giving out the
questions in advance is totally unnatural. By knowing the topics
beforehand, you can prepare sample responses for all those topics and on
the test day, all you need to do is just reproduce your sample response.
Isnt that a great advantage for you? You can get a perfect 6.0 score very
easily!
But theres a catch! You were expecting a few, arent you?
Well, there are close to 200 topics in all far too many to practice
responses in advance. Also, practicing each of these topics is not advisable
as it is going to take a lot of time and effort and there is no point in
mugging them up. You could as well spend this time on learning some
math or vocabulary. However, theres a good news. Just scanning through
these two lists of essay topics will give you an excellent idea of the types of
issues and arguments that show up on test day.
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Now, most of the topics that show up on the GRE Essay section can be
broadly grouped into five categories. I made things a bit easy for you and
listed those five categories below. Take a look.
Education
Arts
Government/Politics
Philosophy
Sciences and Technology
So, next time when you practice writing an essay response, make sure you
write at least an essay from each of these categories.
How do I get ideas for the essay?

This is most likely the second most frequently asked question in our
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support mails by students around the world. Its because a large number of
issue and argument prompts on the official essay pool are hard to
understand correctly. And when you dont understand something, how can
you write about that something?
So, what can you do about to solve this problem? Here are a couple of
things you should work on:
If you were asked to write about a topic from out of nowhere, you would
struggle for ideas. But when you already know that there could only be five
categories from which your essay topics can show up, then you can turn
the table in your favor. You should keep a few related examples for each
one of these categories (i.e. education, arts, politics, technology,
philosophy) as they will be handy and save you precious time on the test
day.
Also, the essay prompts are full of obscure vocabulary and hence are hard
to comprehend. Since, every essay prompt that could appear on the GRE is
openly accessible on the official ETS website, you should give them a read
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through. While reading, you should also make note of all the unfamiliar
words and later learn them. Learning these new words will ensure that you
understand the topic well or at least allow you to take a very good guess.
How to get your essays graded?

Believe it or not, one of the most frequent questions that we receive from
students around the world, is how they can get their essays graded. That is
a good question, actually. Given the fact that there are so many practice
tests for the GRE where you get your Math and Verbal sections graded,
there is not even one practice test in the entire world that can grade your
AWA score for you. If you are wondering why, it is because it is not at all
easy to grade your essay instantaneously.
Think about it. Even on the test day, you will only receive your Math and
Verbal scores, but not the AWA score. ETS itself takes about 7-10 days to
give you an official report of your AWA score. It is that difficult to assess an
essay. Plus, it is required that a human grader reads and grades your
essays, if you want an accurate score. Which is obviously impossible if you
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are taking a practice test at home.

So what can one do? Is there no way to get your AWA essays graded? Well
thankfully, there are quite a few options that you can consider. Weve
listed down all the available options, and it is up to you to decide which of
them you want to choose.
5 Ways to Get Your AWA Essays Graded

ETS Score It Now!
The ETS Score It Now, is a great feature available for you to get your essays
graded. For a small amount of $13 dollars, the ETS Essay Grader will grade
two of your essays. You can submit any two of your essay responses, and
the software will get back to you with a graded score of your AWA. Now,
for most students around the world, and especially for those from the
developing world, $13 is quite a lot of money.
And that is probably the reason why most students dont even know that
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such a facility is available. We must agree, that even we at CrunchPrep

have never used the service ourselves, or know any student who has,
simply because we did not need to. Our expert tutors, on the other hand,
have been grading student essays for free for a long time now. But
nevertheless, were pretty sure that the ETS Score It Now feature will get
you an accurate score, because well, its ETS who developed it.
And there is one more downside with this feature. The score is all you get,
when you submit your essays. No feedback. Now, you would expect that
ETS would give you some valuable tips to improve your score, but
unfortunately, that $13 you spend is only going to get you a couple of
numbers from ETS. So, unless you dont need feedback, you are really not
improving on the essay, and you have money to spend, you should
definitely try and consider some other alternatives to this service offered
by ETS.
Friends, Family, and Experts

Yes. However unbelievable it might seem, your friends can sometimes help
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you get better marks. They can help you identify the mistakes you did not
find obvious enough, and you also get an outsiders opinion on your
essays, and therefore on your points of view. Now, even though your
friends might be untrained, or unaware of the GRE AWA grading system,
having a second pair of eyes look at your writing can be really beneficial to
finding your flaws. Plus, you receive feedback then and there, right on your
face, and it is sometimes the easier way to learn.
But before you let your friends or family judge your essays, you should tell
them beforehand that you only had 30 minutes to write your essay, and so
they should not expect you to write an award-winning piece. You should
also tell them to pay attention to, and then judge you on the following
aspects of your essay: structure, logical flow of ideas, and persuasiveness
of examples. They should ideally not be looking for impressive words or
sentence framing, but it is just an added bonus.
If however, you are too shy to ask your friends or family, try asking an
experienced professor at your college, preferably a professor in linguistics
or someone who is really good at formal, written English language. These
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professors not only give you an accurate assessment of your essays, but
will also give you valuable insights as to where exactly you can improve
your writing skills.
Self-Evaluation
When you dont have access any professors or wise friends who can help
you evaluate your AWA essays, the best option you are left with, is you.
Self-evaluation, though most of the time not recommended, can be a really
useful option for you. There are hundreds of mock essays on the internet,
and with a simple google search, you can get access to various essays for
the GRE. Even the ETS website has a few sample answers for essays, and
the same questions have sample answers which are purposefully written to
mirror a 6.0, or a 5.0 level essay, for example.
So, if you can compare your response with those on the internet, you can
roughly estimate whether your answer is closer to the 4.0 or the 5.0
sample. If you can do this a lot of times, you will begin to see a definite
pattern, which can help you estimate your average AWA score. Also, most
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mock essays usually have an explanation at the end, which explain why
they have been given their respective scores. This really helps you see if
your essay is lacking in similar ways.
This sounds rather difficult, and it actually a really complex and time
taking process, which is why you should try and take this approach as a
last measure; if you cannot find any other alternative helpful enough.
Internet Strangers
If you are an internet geek, you would probably agree that sometimes,
internet strangers are really helpful in nature. There are many GRE
forums like Urch, PaGaLGuY, etc, where you will find hundreds, if not
thousands, of GRE experts and aspirants, who wouldnt mind lending a
hand. Thousands of GRE aspirants visit these forums every single day, and
if you can post your essay and ask for some feedback, more often than not,
someone will provide you with the necessary assistance. While this
someone may or may not be an expert, it often helps to have a second
opinion from someone in your niche.
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GMATAWA.com
Alright. Weve saved the best for the last. GMATAWA.com is probably the
most fantastic resource out there, when it comes to grading your essays. It
was developed to grade GMAT AWA essays, but rest assured, theres not
much difference between GMAT and GRE AWA essays. The basic structure
of essays is the same everywhere, and this website is really helpful in
grading your essays.
The grading happens instantaneously, and as soon as you submit your
essay, you will receive a composite AWA score, along with various metrics
on which your essay has been graded. We, at CrunchPrep, assure you that,
other than ETS Score It Now, this is probably the most accurate AWA rater
you will see, and you can expect a similar AWA score on your exam as well.
So, make full use of this feature, and assess your writing strengths and
weaknesses. However, you should remember that the website allows you to
grade only 10 essays per email address, so choose wisely which essays you
will be sending.
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So, those are the five ways that you can get your AWA scores graded. Most
often, more than one of the resources mentioned above will definitely be
helpful to you. And by the way, remember this: Only two things can make
you a better writer Practice, and Feedback.
CHAPTER 2
Issue Essay vs Argument Essay:

11 Key Differences
Avoid getting confused between the two types of AWA
Essays by understanding these 11 key differences.
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The Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) section of the GRE asks you to
complete two separate but complimentary writing tasks: The Issue Essay
and the Argument Essay. Each task tests your analytical writing skills,
including the assessment of your critical thinking skills. Both these essay
questions are allotted 30 minutes each and are scored on a scale of 6.0.
And those are the only similarities between them both.
There are lots of differences between these two types of AWA essays that a
majority of test takers are unfortunately unaware of. It is common to think
that since both these are essay questions, there arent many differences
between them. And most of the errors that students commit in this section
are due to the confusions that exist between these two essay types. GRE
Issue Essay and GRE Argument Essay are very different in nature, and
hence you need different strategies to tackle them. We will go deep into
each of these essay questions you will see on the GRE, but for now,
remember that the GRE Issue Essay requires you to construct and support
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your opinions on a particular issue that has been given to you, whereas
the GRE Argument Essay requires you to validate the authenticity, or the
logical correctness of an argument that someone else has constructed,
without letting your opinions interfere with the task. Got the difference?
Now, lets move on to the finer details.
Issue Essay vs Argument Essay:

1. Your View vs. Their View:
The GRE Issue Essay basically tests your ability to present an argument
with your views, and your ability to convince the reader to agree to your
point of view. As you can clearly see here, you should include your own
views and add valuable points to your response, in order for the reader to
be convinced to agree with you. On the other hand, the GRE Argument
Essay requires you to completely analyze a brief argument written by
another author, and to effectively critique the argument or the authors
point of view, by providing sufficient evidences, and by asking logical
questions.
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2. General Topic vs. Specic Topic

In an Issue Essay, the debatable topic that has been given to you to
analyze, is very general in nature and can be from any field. It hence
doesnt usually require you to have a very deep knowledge of the topic. The
issue is simply provided as a statement, and your job is to pick a side, stick
to it until the end without fiddling around, and present your points of
view, your analysis, and your final conclusions in a suitable manner.
However, in an Argument essay, the author himself already presents a
case with his/her supporting evidences in the form of a paragraph. Your
job is to see how logical the argument sounds, and check whether this
argument is right or not, whether the argument has been made on solid
grounds, with sufficient evidences or not. You should then effectively
critique the argument, by choosing sides. If you choose to substantiate the
authors point of view, you can cite your own examples to strengthen the
points, and if you wish to go against the given point of view, then you must
be able to ask comprehensive questions that check the validity of the
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evidences provided in the argument.
3. Analysis vs. Reasoning:

The directions for answering the Issue and Argument essays are also
different. The directions given for an Argument Essay read somewhat like
this:
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.
Or like this:
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
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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.
And the directions given for an Issue Essay are entirely different from the
Argument Essay, and unlike the Argument Essay, the Issue Essay can be
accompanied with a varied set of instructions, and there is no one
particular direction for you to follow. For example, on the day of your test,
you may see any one of the following directions, at the end of the issue:
Write a response in which you 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.
agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your
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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.
agree or disagree with the claim. In developing and supporting
your position, be sure to address the most compelling reasons
and/or examples that could be used to challenge your position.
Write a response in which you discuss which view more closely
aligns with your own position and explain your reasoning for the
position you take. In developing and supporting your position,
you should address both of the views presented.
agree or disagree with the claim and the reason on which that
claim is based.
Write a response in which you discuss your views on the policy
and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In
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developing and supporting your position, you should consider the

possible consequences of implementing the policy and explain
how these consequences shape your position.
4. Your Conclusion vs. Their Conclusion:

In an Issue Essay, remember that you must be able to introduce the issue
at hand in your own words briefly, using your own conclusion, while in
an Argument essay, the given argument must be introduced from the
authors point of view using his own conclusion. This is such an
important difference between the two essays, and most students tend to do
the opposite more often than not, which is why they end up with average
scores. You should always be clear on whose conclusion you are taking into
consideration: yours, or the authors. And this depends on whether it is an
Issue Essay or an Argument Essay.
5. Reasons vs. Flaws:

The second paragraph in the Issue Essay is where you should be stating
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the side you have chosen, and also your reasons for standing by it.
Whereas in an Argument Essay, the second paragraph begins with the
biggest flaw that you have identified in the argument made by the author.
You should also discuss how his conclusion made by the author overlooks
this major flaw. The flaws in the authors presented argument must be
identified before you start writing your response, which makes it easy for
you while critiquing the argument.
6. Real Examples vs. Hypothetical Examples:

In the Issue Essay, the body paragraphs (paragraphs 2, 3, and 4) must
definitely involve relevant real world examples that support your chosen
claim. Remember that the examples you provide must not only be
relevant, but they must be real world, true examples. Which means, you
cannot create examples out of thin air, on your own. But, in an Argument
essay, you have the flexibility to create your own examples, as long as they
are relevant to the given topic, and as long as they efficiently substantiate
the argument that you are trying to make. The flaws made by the author
that you have identified, must be stated with explanations and solid
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examples, which can sometimes be fake, as long as they fit the scenario
you are trying to explain.
7. Appreciating vs. Questioning:

The conclusion statement in an Issue Essay always involves agreeing with
the opposing viewpoint in one or two statements. Even though you might
not like agreeing with the opposing viewpoint, you should mention that it
can be right in a few instances too. You should do this in order to show
your emotional maturity level. But, in an Argument essay, the conclusion
statements ends on a note of doubt, where you claim that the argument
may have one or more valid points but is otherwise entirely flawed, needs
more plausible explanations, and requires more solid examples for it to be
valid.
8. Agreeing vs. Disagreeing:

Agreeing to the point of view given in the Issue Essay gives you more
points to write, since more often than not, the issue presented to you is a
general topic, and there will be few points to go against, while there will be
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plenty of points to support the given claim in the issue. But we still advise
students to go the negative route. We will discuss this later on.
But the scenario is entirely different when it comes to the Argument Essay.
The Argument given is deliberately made to sound negative, and since the
given argument requires a critical analysis of the presented claims rather
than your own perspectives, you can, and hence should, go against the
authors point of view. Since more often than not the authors point of view
will be flawed, you will have lots of points to write, and it becomes easier
for you to attack the authors argument instead of trying to support it.
9. Limitation vs. Liberty:

A very important point you should remember is that in an Argument
Essay, you should only prove that the evidences supporting the conclusion
are inadequate, not that the conclusion itself is wrong. The conclusion is
always right, but you should doubt or question the authenticity of the
conclusion, meaning, ask how the author came to such a conclusion
without sufficient supporting claims. But it is never wise to say that the
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conclusion itself is wrong, so you should rather limit yourself to saying that
the conclusion needs more evidences. On the other hand, in an Issue essay
you have the liberty use anything and everything to support your claim.
Because the topic given is very general in nature, you may use any
evidences to support your statements, even if they say that the conclusion
is wrong.
10. Statement vs. Evidence:

The Issue Essay depends on outside, credible facts, because there are no
evidences provided within the issue. The issue question is a simple,
generalized statement, and there will be no evidences provided. Which is
why you should go search for your own evidences, and decide if you want
to support or question the conclusion made by the author. But the
Argument Essay already has its own evidences provided within the
paragraphs, which you will have to analyze and critique.
11. Two Sides vs. One Claim:

The Issue Essay is always like a two sided coin, presented as a contestable
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topic with two sides where you have the option to go with the side you can
present best. The Argument Essay however does not have two sides for you
to choose. It has only one claim which must be analyzed and critiqued.
In the GRE, AWA Section is very important as it shows off your
communication skills and writing abilities. Looking out for these common
differences between the Issue Essay and the Argument Essay, will help you
avoid mistakes and prevent misconceptions. A better understanding of
these differences and sufficient practice will help you score high in this
section.
CHAPTER 3
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7 Major Factors That Boost Your

AWA Score
Learning the various factors that affect your AWA
score positively will help you write better, and score
higher on the AWA.
It is important to note that the essay graders are reading your essay in a
fairly short amount of time, usually between half a minute to two minutes
max. So, rest assured that they are not going over your responses with a
fine-toothed comb. Nor do the graders have any rulebook which they have
to follow in order to add or subtract points from your overall score. There
is no rule that says subtract .5 points for every 3 grammatical errors in the
essay. Or Add 1 point for every 5 impressive GRE words used in the
essay.
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The graders are there to assess your essay holistically. Which means, they
are gauging its overall effectiveness, and then assessing it, as humans. But
how do they gauge effectiveness? Are there any metrics that usually have
in mind while going through the essays? Yes. Fortunately, there are 7
major factors that that may stand out to a grader and help influence your
overall AWA score.
Organization
Organization is given the foremost importance by many graders. And it
isnt that hard to understand why. Essays that are well organized are, in
fact, easy to read. Thats important because you dont want to make the
graders job any more difficult than it already is. The grader has only a
couple of minutes to read your entire essay, and poorly organized essays
are hard to follow. This will lead the grader to give you a score lower than
you actually deserve. But on the other hand, a well-organized argument is
easy to follow. Since the graders are looking at your analytical abilities, it
helps if they can follow your argument.
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If you organization is unclear, however, then your argument is also likely

to come across as unclear. In the next chapters, we will be discussing more
about how your essay should be organized in order to get a high score.
Syntax
Syntactical variety is a very key aspect of writing quality content. Your
essays should always have a proper syntax, and you should be using a
variety of sentences to make your writing look professional enough to get a
perfect score. Syntax is a fancy word for how you organize words into
sentences. And you already know how important organization is. You
should always try to write clear sentences that are crisp and easy to
understand. Unlike what most students believe, you dont have to use
extensive vocabulary, unless they really fit into the scenario. So, save the
GRE vocabulary for Text Completion, and write your essays simply yet
creatively. Again, you should remember that your grader has to read
hundreds of essays on the same day, and they sometimes will not be
thrilled to untangle a complex sentence that you have used. So, they
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naturally skip that sentence and read further. So, it is always better to
write clearly and simply than to go for risky propositions and complex
sentence structures.
Length
A general finding is that longer essays tend to score higher than their
shorter counterparts. This may be attributed to various obvious reasons.
First of all, if you have written a pretty long essay, it means that you have a
lot of insight into the given topic and you are able to address numerous
issues relevant to the discussion. Second, if you can write a 500 word essay
coherently within 30 minutes, you will be considered as a voracious writer
in general. These are the abilities that are usually likely to impress a
grader.
But, make sure that the quality of the essay is maintained throughout the
length and breadth of your essay, for, if you dont maintain quality, you
might come off as someone who is just trying to impress but is unable to
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organize and prioritize their thoughts. Long essays that are clearly
organized, use professional language, and contain strong supporting
evidences, and give enough reasons to the grader to give you a better score.
Well soon discuss more on this.
Support
Your essay response should definitely contain quality instances of
premises, facts or reasons given to support the conclusion that you are
trying to make. Your essay needs to contain some sort of supporting
evidence, whether it be logical, statistical, factual, or other forms of
justifications. Without proper support, your essay will not be able to
effectively develop a firm position on the given argument or issue, and it
certainly fails to persuade the readers opinion. So, make sure you always
look for supporting evidences, and provide them wherever needed.
Examples
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Like discussed erstwhile, youre going to have to come up with a lot of

examples that help illustrate the point youre trying to prove, if you want to
make your essay stand apart from the rest of the pack. Since test takers
have a mere 30 minutes to write these essays and will never know the topic
beforehand, the graders are used to seeing a lot of hypothetical examples.
And this is completely okay. As long as you make sure that the examples fit
the point you are trying to explain, it is completely fine. But the way to
make your essay stand out is to use real life examples. I know it is very
difficult, but if you are lucky enough to have some background about the
given topic, you should try to include an expert opinion within the essay,
and if you can, you should try and add relevant facts, statistics, and case
studies to your essay.
Grammar
Although the AWA does not test your grammar skills and the caliber of
your writing, if your essay has a lot of grammar errors and spelling errors,
it raises a serious red flag in the mind of the graders. This often happens
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because students tend to think that they can outsmart the grader by using
fancy sounding words once in a while. While doing this doesnt hurt, it is
important to remember that you should only use words you actually know.
Sometimes, students might not know the exact meaning, or even worse,
the spelling of a big word that they heard somewhere, but they still go
ahead and use it in a sentence. And obviously, they will be wrong, one way
or the other. Now, while spelling is not one of the criteria the graders look
for in your essay, nothing gives them a red flag like reading Sevaral
entreprenuers or primery hypothesys. These are regular words used
every day, and if you cannot spell them right, your score is bound to go
down. Remember that unlike MS Word or other desktop word processors,
there is no spell check or grammar check available on the GRE AWA. So,
dont hurt your score by using words whose spellings you dont know.
Speed
The word processor on the GRE is quite basic in nature. Youll have basic
keyboard functions, plus three other features: cut, copy, paste, and undo.
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And thats all. No other shortcuts or spell checks or other advanced

features like bold and underline. Now, these functions work exactly as they
do on your computer. You can cut text from a portion of your essay and
paste it in at a different point. Or you can use undo to delete your typing.
Use these features and reduce the time you spend on editing your essay.
Learn how to use these features, if you are new to them, and practice speed
typing at home.
This is really essential in these days of email and text messaging, where
most of the younger population use chat language and shortened forms of
words like lyk, hw, wat, imma etc. While this form of English is of no good
anywhere in your life, it is especially frowned upon by the GRE
community. So, if you find yourself using these sort of words in your essay,
which has often happened in the past with many students, you will see
your score go down suddenly and rapidly. So, it wouldnt hurt to do a little
typing practice at home before test day.
So, those are the seven major factors that help you boost your essay score
on the GRE. You should analyze your AWA essays whenever you take a
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practice test, and see if your essays have all of these.
CHAPTER 4
The 6 Step Process to Conquer

GRE Analytical Writing
These 6 steps when followed in the given order, will
help you conquer the AWA section on the GRE. Tackle
even the toughest of AWA Essay questions with these
simple steps.
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Here we discuss the step by step process you should implement, if you
want to write powerful AWA essays in under 30 minutes and get a 6.0
score. Each of these steps discusses what you should exactly do, so as to
make things easier for you on test day. All you need to do is follow these
steps during practice, and get these tips into your head without much
effort. Though the Issue and Argument Essays are quite similar when it
comes to answering, we have given you separate step by step process to ace
them both.
AWA Issue Essay:

The Analysis of an Issue essay tests your ability to explore the
complexities of an issue or opinion and, if appropriate, to take a position
that is informed by your understanding of those complexities. What this
means is you should properly analyze the given issue and take a strong
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position: either negative or positive, and then elucidate examples as to

why you have chosen that particular side.
The specific directions for the issue essay task are given like this: In this
section, you will need to analyze the issue presented and explain your
views on it. There is no correct or best answer. Instead, you should
consider various perspectives as you develop your own position on the
issue.
Before you begin writing your response, you should take a couple of
minutes to think about the issue and plan a proper response before you
begin writing. This helps you organize your ideas and develop them fully.
Make sure to leave sufficient time to reread your response and make any
revisions that you think necessary.
Following are the six simple steps that you should follow in the same
order, if you want to pen down a powerful AWA Issue essay.
Step 1: Read the Essay

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Obviously, this must be your first step. But you dont just read the essay.
You must perform a smart read. A smart read is where you read the
prompt and figure out the central issue, and jot down this issue on your
scratch paper, including some of the important concepts from the given
topic. This is what more than 95% of students fail to do. Rather than
juggling all your thoughts inside your mind, it is a lot easier to pen down
whatever you have understood from reading the prompt in your own
words.
Your work on this first step gets you grounded for the essay ahead. After
reading the given issue, and writing it down in a few concise words, you
should be able to understand exactly what the issue is and also what some
of the crucial concepts related to that issue are.
Step 2: Brainstorm Reasons and Examples

This is perhaps the most crucial step of all, and this step is also where most
of the heavy lifting gets done. Once you know what points you want to
prove and what examples you will use to prove that point, writing the
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essay will be very easy. Half of the duty lies in brainstorming efficient
examples and supporting reasons to supplement your point of view. So,
make sure you spend adequate time on this step. Pre-planning before you
start writing is of the utmost importance, because then, you will have a
continuous flow of thought while writing, and there wont be any wastage
of time. If you start writing without thinking through the issue or planning
the structure of your essay, you run the risk of wasting time on editing and
re-editing your points.
Or even worse, you might reach a dead end and there is no more evidence
left with you to substantiate your point of view, but youve already spent
20 minutes on the essay that you cannot go back and write a fresh piece.
So, it is important that you take the time to brainstorm some examples and
then pick a side. After youve written down the central issue and the key
concepts, you should ideally make a pro and con list on the scratch
paper. Start thinking of reasons for both agreeing with and disagreeing
with the given issue. Once you have enough reasons to pick a side, you can
move further. You should think about how your personal experiences
relate to the issue at hand. Think about things you have observed or
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experienced in daily life, read about in magazines or newspapers, or even

heard about from your family members and friends.
Next, you should be coming up with some examples of your own, that
support or illustrate your point of view. Good supporting examples can be
the difference between a score of 4.0 and 6.0, so it is worth spending a
little time trying to generate them. Dont spend more than two or three
minutes on this part because you can still write a good essay without
perfect examples.
Step 3: Pick a Thesis

After you have some reasons and examples for side that you have chosen to
go with, you will have to pick a proper thesis based on which you will write
your opinion. This is because you dont have to actually believe the
position you write about; sometimes, you may disagree with the issue at
hand, but find it easier to come up with examples and reasons for the other
side of the argument. So, you need to decide which thesis you are
comfortable writing about. Dont mull over it for minutes together. Just
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choose whichever thesis allows you to write the strongest essay. In most
cases, you find the con side easier to argue. You can find a lot of
examples that way. And that is completely fine.
Now your thesis needs to state why you believe this position is correct.
Take a moment to think about this, and jot your thesis down on your
scratch paper. Now you are ready to outline you essay.
Step 4: Outline Your Essay

Dont start writing your essay altogether. Instead, outline your essay in the
direction you want to take. Figure out what you want to write in the
introduction, how you want to start off, and how you want to end the
conclusion. Then, figure out what you want to write in the body
paragraphs. More importantly, you will have to consider how to introduce
the opposing side of the argument and how counter it with your point of
view. Mentioning the other side of the coin makes the graders think that
you are mature enough to have considered the various perspectives on the
issue, without going ahead blindly based on intuition.
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Step 5: Write Your Response

If you have finished all the previous steps properly and as planned, then
this is by far the easiest step of all. All you need to do is write your
response in a proper order, something that looks like this:
1. Introduction hook the reader with an amazing intro and state
your most important thesis
2. Agreeing to the given issue
3. Bringing up the negative side of the issue along with supporting
facts and quotes
4. Building up the negative side further with examples and support
5. Conclusion
This is the most basic essay outline, and the most famous out there. But
you can also follow an unconventional structure and still write a great
essay. Some of the other structures that you can follow are:
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1. Introduction
2. First argument for the side you take
3. Refute your first take and argue for the opposite side
4. Second argument for the side you take
5. Refute your take again and argue for the opposite side
6. Conclusion
This structure allows you to take a neutral step, and hence interweave the
arguments for both sides, just like in a debate.
Another structure that can be used in many situations is:
1. Introduction
2. Argument for your side
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3. Argument against your side

4. Argument for your side
5. Argument against your side
6. Conclusion: evaluate both sides and arrive at thesis
This structure is probably the hardest of all, but has the advantage of being
new and uncommon. Graders will definitely appreciate a new structure
once in a while, and tend to reward essays that move beyond the norm.
But, the point is, the writing part of the essay should really be the easiest
part. Most people who think they have trouble writing actually dont have
difficulty with writing, but they have trouble figuring out what exactly they
are trying to say. So if youve completed the previous steps, you should
know more or less what it is that you want to say about the topic.
Step 6: Proofread
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Proofreading is another step that is often neglected, mainly because test

takers dont have the time to. They think they cannot afford to waste one
or two minutes proofreading the essay, while they can use the same time
to write an additional sentence or two. But as a matter of fact, a perfect
400 word essay gets a higher score than an imperfect 450 word essay. So,
you should rather focus on improving what you have already written, and
try to spend at least three to four minutes on proofreading what you have
written.
Since you dont have a spell checker on the AWA, you dont know if you
misspelled any word in a hurry. So, be sure to check every single word, and
try to refine your essay as much as you can, before the time runs out. Make
sure you have all the necessary parts of your essay and the examples you
meant to use. Doing these things will clean up the overall appearance of
your essay and can only positively affect your score.
AWA Argument Essay

While the Analysis of an Issue task measures your ability to create your
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own argument, the Analysis of an Argument essay measures your ability to

evaluate someone elses argument. In the words of the test writers, the
argument essay tests your ability to formulate an appropriate and
constructive critique of a specific conclusion based upon a specific line of
thinking.
There are two key points in these directions; evaluate the argument, and
most importantly (its so important the directions place it in italics), do
not present your own views on the subject! Some test takers end up
basically writing an analysis of an issue essay when they are supposed to
be writing an analysis of an argument essay. Your job here is simply to
evaluate and critique the argument presented, not offer your own position
on the subject. If you do not answer the question appropriately, you can
say goodbye to a good score.
The steps for the Analysis of an Argument essay are somewhat similar to
the steps for Analysis of an Issue:
Step 1: Evaluate the Argument

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The Analysis of an Argument task presents you with a passage exactly like
the passages found on Critical Reasoning questions. Your first task is to
break the argument down into its conclusion and premises. Once you have
the conclusion and the premises, the next step is to find the assumptions
underlying the argument.
Step 2: Brainstorm Assumptions

These arguments are usually full of holes, even more so than Critical
Reasoning arguments. You should be able to find two or three major
assumptions necessary to make the conclusion work. Look for the common
argument patterns: causal, sampling, and analogy. Of course, there may be
a lot of assumptions spread around the entire argument, but you only need
two or three good assumptions to construct your essay. Now that you have
the major assumptions, you can plan the general format of your essay.
Step 3: Pick a Thesis

Picking a thesis on the argument section is rather easy and involves just
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one step. Just assume that whatever assumptions that the author has
made have no evidences, and go completely negative on that, and prepare
a thesis in your mind in that direction.
Now your thesis needs to state why you believe this position is correct.
Take a moment to think about this, and jot your thesis down on your
scratch paper. Now you are ready to outline you essay.
Step 4: Outline Your Essay

Once you have laid out the assumptions of the argument, you need to
evaluate the strength of these assumptions. Since your task is to evaluate
and critique the logic of the argument, you must consider how viable these
assumptions are. Generally, the arguments on the GRE are poorly
reasoned, so you should basically be looking for reasons the assumptions
fail to lead to the conclusion. Think about ways you could weaken and
strengthen the argument. A typical essay plan looks like this:
1. Introduction: Describe the premise and point out the flaws or
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state your intention

2. Detail first assumption; explain problems with it and how to
weaken/strengthen the argument
3. Repeat for second assumption
4. Repeat for third assumption
5. Conclusion: Give final evaluation of the validity of the argument
This is the most basic format for the argument essay, but feel free to make
changes as and when you need. You may also use one of the following
structures that are less commonly used.
1. Introduction: Describe the premises, conclusion, and
assumptions of the argument
2. Weaken the argument by attacking the assumptions
3. Strengthen the argument by bolstering the assumptions
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4. Conclusion: Present final evaluation of the strengths and

weaknesses of the argument
Another variation goes right to the assumptions in the argument:
1. Introduction
2. Detail first assumption; explain problems with it and how to
weaken/strengthen the argument.
3. Repeat the same for second assumption.
4. Repeat the same for third assumption.
5. Conclusion: Evaluate the strength of the argument based on the
assumptions.
Step 5: Write
The writing process on the argument essay is in some ways a little easier
than that of the issue essay. Because the focus of this essay is the logic of
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than that of the issue essay. Because the focus of this essay is the logic of
the argument, there is no need for creative prose. Instead, you are merely
presenting the flaws of the given argument in an objective fashion. Your
delivery on the argument essay can be straightforward and simple and you
can still get a great score, provided your analysis is sound. Following is
what each paragraph needs to contain.
INTRODUCTION PARAGRAPH
Your introduction paragraph needs to lay out the basic parts of the
argument and let the reader know what the purpose of the essay is. Your
introduction should have these elements:
A statement of the conclusion
A statement of the premises
A statement of the essays purpose
BODY PARAGRAPHS
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The body paragraphs of an argument essay should describe the

assumptions necessary to the argument and then critique them. A good
critique should reveal the weaknesses of the assumptions and also show
how the argument could be strengthened. Argument essays do not require
specific examples and in many cases, specific examples would be
inappropriate. Focus instead on dissecting the logic of the given argument.
A body paragraph should have the following components:
A description of an assumption
An explanation of the weaknesses of the assumption
An evaluation of the conclusion in light of the assumption
CONCLUSION PARAGRAPH
The conclusion paragraph of an argument essay doesnt need to do much,

but as with the issue essay, you need to have one. All you have to do is
make a final evaluation of the soundness of the argument.
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Step 6: Proofread
Before you leave your essay, spend one or two minutes proofreading your
essay. Make sure you have all the necessary parts of your essay and that
your essay is free from grammatical and spelling errors. Correct any
typographical errors. Doing these things will clean up the overall
appearance of your essay and can only positively affect your score.
CHAPTER 5
Examples and Analyses of

Perfect 6.0 AWA Essays
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Knowing how a perfect AWA Essay should look like

will help you write perfect sounding, high scoring
essays.
Now that you know how exactly you should structure your AWA essays, it
is time to understand what a perfect essay looks like. In this chapter, we
will discuss a couple of examples for perfect 6.0 Argument and Issue
essays, and we will also analyze the reasons these essays deserve a perfect
score. This will give you a basic idea of the various key aspects of the AWA
essays that you should include while writing. These essays have been taken
from the ETS Essay Pool itself.
Example and Analysis of a Perfect 6.0 Issue Essay

Question:
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When someone achieves greatness in any field such as the arts, science,
politics, or business that persons achievements are more important than
any of his or her personal faults.
Essay:
When individuals attain greatness, their achievements are more important
than their personal faults. While historians should not whitewash the
personal foibles of great individuals, the impact that these mortals have
had in their fields should tower over any personality defects. To focus on
the personal weaknesses of great individuals is to miss the importance of
their achievements.
The course of human history is decorated with individuals able to rise
above their peers and reach the zenith in their fields. These individuals are
often the subject of intense scrutiny from contemporaneous skeptics and
later historians. But no one can lead an exemplary private life all the time;
no human being is able to withstand such surveillance and historical
scrutiny without personal faults coming to light. Great individuals are no
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exception. However, it is misguided to focus on their personal faults rather

than their achievements. To do so is to miss the importance of their work,
without which our culture would be worse off.
For example, Abraham Lincoln was arguably one of the greatest Presidents
the United States has ever had. He managed to bring the country through
a substantial revolution and to end slavery despite powerful economic and
social forces working against him day and night. However, Lincoln was not
a saint. He was moody and prone to depressive funks that disrupted his
family life and slowly eroded his marriage. These personal faults did not
reduce his success as a President. While we do not have to ignore questions
about whether he was a depressive, we also should not consider them an
important part of his political heritage. In contrast, many people criticize
Lincolns decision to suspend the right of habeas corpus. This (presumed)
failing is not personal in nature, but relates directly to Lincolns work in his
field. Criticisms of this sort are entirely relevant, whereas personal
criticisms are not.
Another example of a great individual dogged by criticism of his personal
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conduct is Albert Einstein. Einstein developed a number of the most

important theories in modern physics, including an explanation of the
photoelectric effect, an explanation of Brownian motion, special and
general relativity, and Bose-Einstein quantum statistics. Each one of these
theories would have been considered a great lifes work for a scientist; for
one man to contribute this much is remarkable. However, Einstein also
had life-long problems with infidelity. The fact that he cheated on his wife
is in no way relevant to his accomplishments in the field of physics, and
indeed most references to Einstein properly ignore it. To focus attention
on the faults of his personal life is to obscure the impact he made on
history.
Great individuals have personal faults, as all human beings do. Yet it is
incorrect to assert that these faults detract from those individuals
accomplishments. We are better able to appreciate the gravity of great
accomplishments when we are not burying our heads in the sand, in search
of personal failings.
Explanation:
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The essay above deserves a perfect score, because it takes all the 7 major
elements that graders look for, as we have already discussed in chapter 3:
Clarity, Structure, Sentence Variety, Vocabulary, Grammar, Evidence, and
Reasoning.
The thesis provided by the student is very clear and concise. There is no
confusion about which side the student took. The issue essay tests how
well we can present a position on an issue effectively and persuasively, and
this essay passes both the tests.
The piece is also very well organized. The most popularly used structure
intro-body-body-body-conclusion really works well for this type of an
issue, and the student made good use of it. While the response included
only two examples as opposed to the suggested three, the two examples
presented are extremely strong. President Lincoln is an ideal case study of
a leader whose greatness should be not be obscured by his domestic
problems. The same can be said with Einstein; his infidelities may have
wounded his family emotionally, but his contribution to modern science
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and technology will be remembered throughout the history of mankind.

So, obviously, two of the most historic and the most apt examples were
presented by the student here.
Additionally, the conclusion is substantial and does an excellent job of
summing up the essay. The student uses a variety of sentences in order to
make the conclusion unique, and not sounding too much like the
introduction itself. He/She does a great job of restating the introduction
paragraph without sounding overly redundant. Lastly, this essay is
extremely well-written, and shows the students grasp over written English
language. The grammar and syntax are almost flawless, and it is hard to
write a better essay response to this issue, in under 30 minutes.
These are the reasons why this essay deserves a straight 6.0 score.
Example and Analysis of a Perfect 6.0 Argument

Essay
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Question:
The following appeared in the editorial section of a national news
magazine:
The rating system for electronic games is similar to the movie rating
system in that it provides consumers with a quick reference so that they
can determine if the subject matter and contents are appropriate. This
electronic game rating system is not working because it is self-regulated
and the fines for violating the rating system are nominal. As a result an
independent body should oversee the game industry and companies that
knowingly violate the rating system should be prohibited from releasing a
game for two years.
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. Point out flaws in the
arguments logic and analyze the arguments underlying assumptions. In
addition, evaluate how supporting evidence is used and what evidence
might counter the arguments conclusion. You may also discuss what
additional evidence could be used to strengthen the argument or what
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changes would make the argument more logically sound.

Essay:
The argument claims that the electronic games rating system, although
similar to the movie rating system, is not working because it is selfregulated and violation fines are nominal; Hence, the gaming rating
system should be overseen by an independent body. Stated in this way the
argument fails to mention several key factors, on the basis of which it
could be evaluated. The conclusion relies on assumptions, for which there
is no clear evidence. Therefore, the argument is rather weak,
unconvincing, and has several flaws.
First, the argument readily assumes that because the electronic game
rating system is self-regulated, it is not working well. This statement is a
stretch and not substantiated in any way. There are numerous examples in
other areas of business or commerce, where the entities are self-regulated
and rather successful. For instance, FIA, the Formula1 racing organization
is self-regulated. Yet, the sport is very popular and successful, drawing
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millions of spectators around the world each year. Tickets are rather
expensive, races are shown on pay-per-view, and nearly all drivers are paid
very well.
Another example is the paralleled movie rating system that the argument
mentions. The author fails to clarify whether it is working well, but it is
clear that the movie rating system is pretty well received by people, who
often base their decisions to go see a movie with kids or not on the movie
rating. It has never been a case when someone would feel cheated by the
movie rating and express disappointment afterwards. Since the movie
rating system is also self-regulated, it follows that this regulatory method
is working pretty well and it is not obvious how it can be the reason for the
poor electronic game rating system. The argument would have been much
clearer if it explicitly gave examples of how the self-regulatory system led
to bad ratings and customer dissatisfaction.
Second, the argument claims that any violation fees for bad electronic
game ratings are nominal. It thus suggests that this is yet another reason
for the rating system not working. This is again a very weak and
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unsupported claim as the argument does not demonstrate any correlation

between the monetary amount of the fines and the quality of the electronic
game rating system. In fact, the argument does not even draw a parallel
with the mentioned movie rating system and its violation fines. If any such
correlation had been shown for the movie rating system, which supposedly
works well, then the author would have sounded a bit more convincing. In
addition, if the argument provided evidence that low violation fines lead to
electronic game manufacturers to ignore any regulations with respect to
the game rating system, the argument could have been strengthened even
further.
Finally, the argument concludes that an independent body should oversee
the game industry and companies that violate the rating system, should be
punished. From this statement again, it is not at all clear how an
independent regulatory body can do a better job than a self-regulated one.
Without supporting evidence and examples from other businesses where
independent regulatory bodies have done a great job, one is left with the
impression that the claim is more of a wishful thinking rather than
substantive evidence. As a result, this conclusion has no legs to stand on.
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In summary, the argument is flawed and therefore unconvincing. It could

be considerably strengthened if the author clearly mentioned all the
relevant facts. In order to assess the merits of a certain situation, it is
essential to have full knowledge of all contributing factors.
Explanation:
The essay above deserves a perfect score, because it takes all the 7 major
elements that graders look for, as we have already discussed in chapter 3:
Clarity, Structure, Sentence Variety, Vocabulary, Grammar, Evidence, and
Reasoning.
The thesis provided by the student is very clear and concise. There is no
confusion about which side the student took. The issue essay tests how
well we can present a position on an issue effectively and persuasively, and
this essay passes both the tests.
The piece is also very well organized. The most popularly used structure
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intro-body-body-body-conclusion really works well for this type of an

argument, and the student made good use of it. The response included
sufficient examples that are pretty solid, and more than satisfy the
students take. The examples provided are also real-life in nature, as
opposed to many hypothetical examples that students write. This gives this
essay response quite an edge.
The student uses a variety of sentences in order to make his/her point
strong enough to concur with. He/she does a great job of restating the
introduction paragraph without sounding overly redundant. All the
paragraphs are very well written, and the structure, writing, and
vocabulary used by the student shows the students grasp over written
English language. The grammar and syntax are almost flawless, and it is
hard to write a better essay response to this issue, in under 30 minutes.
These are the reasons why this essay deserves a straight 6.0 score.
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CHAPTER 6
6 Types of False Reasoning You

Should Avoid on the Argument
Essay
Be wary of these 6 types of false reasoning traps on the
Argument Essay, and getting a 6.0 score will be a
cakewalk.
In order to confuse test takers, the AWA essays will always contain some
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flawed reasoning or illogical statements. In particular, some of the

paragraphs on the AWA Argument essay will contain flawed reasoning,
which can appear in many forms. While these forms can potentially be
unlimited in number, most of them can be categorized into 6 groups.
These are potentially the 6 types of false reasoning that you frequently see
on the AWA Argument essays:
1. Creating stereotypes. Assuming that characteristics of a group in
general apply to each member of that group.
2. Assuming that a certain condition is necessary for a certain
outcome
3. Drawing a weak analogy between two things
4. Confusing a cause-effect relationship with a correlation
(famously known as post hoc ergo propter hoc, i.e. correlation
does not imply causation)
5. Relying on inappropriate or potentially unrepresentative
statistics
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6. Relying on biased or tainted data (methods for collecting data

must be unbiased and the poll responses must be credible)
Almost all of the argument essays contain more than one of the following
flaws, so it is important that you are aware of each and every possible
flawed reasoning.
1. The Stereotypical Assumption

We see this happen quite often in our everyday life. People resort to
creating stereotypes of a particular person, or a group of people. However,
common sense says that it is pretty unrealistic to describe a group and
then expect that every single member fulfills the very same characteristics.
For example, saying that Girls are weaker than guys or that Asians are
geniuses is just plain wrong, because in both the cases, the statements are
generalized in nature. While both the statements can seem to be true for
the most part, we all know that in the real world, some girls are stronger
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than guys, and that some Asians fail their tests. Which means, one cannot
simply make a sweeping statement in either of the aforementioned cases.
Now, you can easily remember this type of false reasoning on the AWA, by
relating it to stereotypes. We generally think of stereotypes as harmful
because they unfairly limit a certain group to a predefined characteristic
that often has little to no evidence. Hence, in order to avoid falling trap to
this stereotypical assumption fallacy, you should immediately consider any
sentence that generalizes a particular group as plain wrong, and attack
that assumption when you are writing your response.
2. The Necessity Assumption:

This is a very frequent type of false reasoning that hides in plain sight.
Most students simply cannot identify that this type of reasoning is wrong.
The author of an argument usually assumes that a certain condition is
necessary to achieve the desired result. This sounds reasonable, but the
problem here is, the author simply says that it is necessary to do
something to achieve something, and does not provide the necessary
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evidence which proves that there is no other means of achieving a similar

result.
For example, the arguments says that, if students have to perform better in
schools, it is necessary that the teachers be more active in the classroom.
Now, this looks like a perfectly logical statement to anyone. But the
problem is, the author has not considered whether there are any other
ways students can perform better in schools. The author makes a simple
statement that outlines only one necessity the teachers being active
and does not talk about the relevant evidences, or the possibility of other
ways to achieve the same result. Of course, there are other factors
involved: maybe students can perform better if they study every day at
home, or if the school redesigns the curriculum to suit the needs of
students, etc. So, you should keep in mind to attack this necessity
assumption, and also to include the alternative factors or possibilities.
3. The Illogical Analogy:

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Analogy is when someone comes to a conclusion about something on the

basis of another thing. For example, if a giant conglomerate has doubled
its sales in the last one year because it had spent over $10 million on
advertising, then in order for another giant conglomerate to double its
sales, it has to spend more than $10 million on advertising.
Now, on the first glance, this might seem like a logical argument. But, if
you think about it carefully, it is an illogical analogy that the author has
made in order to prove his/her point. The argument may seem sound
enough to agree to, but one simply cant analogize these two scenarios,
even though the size of the companies is similar.
First of all, we dont know if the two companies are based in the same
country or not. The demographics in their respective countries may
respond to different incentives. And there are several other factors like
industry, market size, product quality, support system, target audience,
consumer trends, economic situation in the country, etc., that need to be
addressed, before the author can make such a comparison. Without this
thorough background info, one simply cant make this analogy, and test
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takers should hence not fall into such traps.
4. The Correlation Causation Confusion:

As confusing and bemusing as the title is, this is one of the more frequent
fallacies that appear on the AWA argument essays. More famously known
as the post hoc fallacy, this is easily one of the most common types of false
reasoning youll encounter on test day. So it is very important that you
master it.
Many arguments try to confuse test takers by arguing that correlation and
causation are one and the same. But in fact, they arent. There is actually a
world of difference between them both. While correlation just means that
two events have occurred simultaneously, causation means that one event
is the result of another event. Now you understand how different these two
are. To illustrate further, let us take this as an example: In the year 2000,
Company X released their new computer called Series 5, and that same
year, the US witnessed a huge economic recession. Again in 2008, the
company released its second computer called Series 6, and the US had
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company released its second computer called Series 6, and the US had
undergone another economic recession. So, whenever this company
releases a new computer, the economy goes down.
Do you see how illogical it sounds? That is the difference between
correlation and causation. The above example shows correlation, and not
causation. So, one should be careful enough to understand that just
because one event happens after another, it doesnt mean that the first
event caused the other to occur.
5. The Statistical Irrelevance:

You will often find that the AWA arguments cite statistical evidence to
support their claims. Now, while we appreciate any kind of statistical data
that further bolsters the authors point of view, we must also be careful to
analyze the relevance of the statistical data in a particular scenario.
Sometimes, the argument may cite a statistic according to a survey where a
small group of people were asked a question, and based on their views, the
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author generalized the opinion of the people of the entire

city/state/country. For example, if a survey of 1000 people in New York
City say that they really need a new park in the city, does it mean that the
entire population of the city feel the same? In order to draw a conclusion
about anything, a larger sample is required. In order to really identify the
voice of the people, the survey should at least include a majority of people
in the city. If the population of New York City is 10 million, then the survey
should try to include the opinions of at least half that number.
Hence, test takers should keep an eye on statistics mentioned in the
arguments made by the author, and try to validate the relevance or
significance of the given statistical data.
6. The Data Bias:

Sometimes, even though surveys include a large number of people or a
certainly large sample space, it is not enough to conclude that the results
obtained from the survey are really true. Biased data is another reason why
data can be manipulated with, or tainted easily. For any survey or data to
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be considered legitimate it has to be collected in an unbiased, fair, and

scientific manner.
For example, if a survey was conducted among children in a city, on the
question What is your favorite color? and the children were given only
two options, Blue and Red, one cannot conclude that Red is the most
favorite color for the children in the city, even though 83% of the children
chose Red. The survey clearly does not ask an open ended question, and is
biased towards either Red, or Blue, or both. The survey is designed,
consciously or unconsciously, to yield certain desired responses, and this
definitely manipulates responses by providing narrow options.
Hence, test takers should question the statistical legitimacy of a survey,
and question the author whether the survey or data obtained is scientific
and unbiased or not.
Checklist for Argument Essay Task:

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Here is a checklist you should use when you practice writing argument
essays. Ask yourself these questions to identify the flaws in the given
argument.
1. Are the facts stated in the argument real or are they just
preposterous exaggerations? (Hint: you can always question the
source of the information provided in the argument)
2. If the argument draws conclusions from any sample statistical
data, then is the connection between the data and the conclusion
strong?
3. Is the sample data taken from the group similar to the other
group for which the conclusions were made?
4. Is the sample data significant enough?
5. Is the provided sample data inconclusive or invalid? Did it
exclude other important factors?
6. Are the statements mentioned in the argument from an authority
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on the subject or from individuals trying to voice their

concerns/opinions?
7. Do you have any real world examples that invalidate the
conclusion? (examples from your personal experiences, from
articles you read before, from the news or from historical
incidents)
Is there anything missing in the argument? Maybe there is really
something that should have been mentioned to make the argument more
concrete.
CHAPTER 7
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How to Finish an Essay in 20

Minutes: 9 Effective Strategies
to Save Time on the AWA
Section
Sit back, relax and watch as others end up with
unfinished essays. Learn these effective time
management strategies and finish off your essay in 20
minutes.
When it comes to acing any section on the GRE, it all boils down to
mastering one key factor time. Time is the only reason why 99% of the
test takers cannot get a perfect score on the GRE, let alone on the AWA.
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But then, just as pretty much with everything related to the GRE, we at
CrunchPrep have cracked the code in order to finish off a brilliantly
written essay in under 20 minutes. Thats right, 20 minutes only.
Just as with other sections on the GRE, there are a few time saving
strategies that you can adopt on test day, if you want to finish off the AWA
section quickly, and still score a perfect 6.0. Here are the 9 most effective
time saving strategies that you should implement on test day.
1. Finish off Introduction and Conclusion First

This is an amazing technique that not only saves time for you, but also
relieves you of the pressure of writing something in reply. All you have to
do is, as soon as you are ready to pen down your response, finish off
writing the introduction and the conclusion paragraphs first. Dont bother
touching the other paragraphs yet.
Now you may wonder, how on earth one can write the conclusion part
without ever concluding the essay in the first place. Simple. As we have
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already discussed in the previous chapters, you first outline your essay
before you start writing it. So, by the time you are about to start penning
down your response, you will have already figured out what you want to
write in the introduction, how you want to start off, and how you want to
end the conclusion. So, it becomes rather easy for you to get started.
Finish these two very important paragraphs as early as you can, preferably
in the first 5 minutes. Now, if you can do this well, you only have three
more paragraphs to write, and you have over 20 minutes of time left. You
can easily write each paragraph in 5 minutes, and the entire essay will be
finished before you know it.
2. Always Be Negative
Even though we asked you to pick a thesis in the previous chapters, you
should know that if you want to save time, you will have to try and stay on
the negative side. This applies to both the Issue and the Argument essays.
If you are wondering why, you should understand how the human brain
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works when analyzing a controversy. It takes no time for us to point out

mistakes in others, while it takes a lot of thinking and courage to
appreciate something that is controversial, because our brains are
evolutionarily hardwired to stay away from something foreign, in order to
protect us. And given the incredibly limited time that you have on your
hands, it will be easier for you to criticize the authors point of view, than
to take his/her side.
So, let us go with some prejudice here. Before you even start reading the
essay question, you should be in a negative state of mind, and be ready to
counter the given essay with lots of criticism. You should believe that
whatever the author has written is false, no matter how logical it may
seem. This sort of thinking will help you brainstorm the relevant points
quickly.
3. Attack the Assumptions

In both the Issue and the Argument essay questions, the author will have
made multiple assumptions in order to come to a particular conclusion. It
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is your job now to attack the very assumption that the author makes. There
is no point in attacking mere facts, because we never know if the facts are
true or false. Which means, you cannot simply claim that the facts
presented are wrong. But you can always say that the assumption is
wrong. So, as soon as you start reading the essay question, figure out
where the author has made assumptions, and think about how you can
attack them.
4. Dont Be A Perfectionist
This is a big problem among students today, especially those who really
want to get a perfect 6.0 score. Wanting a 6.0 score is okay, but the
problem is, these students try to be perfectionists about everything they
write. They try to make sure every little thing about their essay response is
perfect. Now, while this is a good practice in normal life, you should
remember that this will hit you badly on test day. You cannot simply make
sure everything you write is perfect, especially when the clock is running
after you, and when you are totally stressed out.
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A better strategy is to keep writing even though you make mistakes, as

once you think you are done with the writing part, then you can start
proofreading your copy for mistakes and small errors.
5. Use the Scratch Paper

One of the biggest sins that GRE test takers commit, is that they dont use
the scratch paper to its fullest. Dont be under the impression that the
scratch paper is given only to help you solve quant problems. The scratch
paper can be used effectively to score higher on the AWA section too. Use
the scratch paper to pen down your thoughts as you are reading the given
topic, and also make use of it to outline your essay, and to devise a proper
answering strategy.
If you need more details, on how to use the scratch paper on the
GRE, we have done a separate post on that. Check out more scratch paper
tips and strategies here.
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6. Practice Typing
If there is one thing that can help you write a 500-600 word essay in under
20 minutes, it is the ability to type fast. Considering the fact that you will
take about 2-3 minutes to read and understand the given question, another
2-3 minutes to figure out what you want to write, and another couple of
minutes to outline your essay, you will be left with roughly 20 minutes to
write a 600 word essay. Considering the fact that you should save some
time to proofread your essay, you should probably be able to type around
600 words in 15 minutes, which means, 200 words every 5 minutes.
Yes, it is possible to type a couple hundred words in 5 minutes, if you
already know what you are going to write. Dont worry about it. 200 words
in 5 minutes equals 40 words per minute, which is exactly the global
average for typing speed. But still, if you think you cant type that fast, start
practicing today. There are some fantastic free resources like Keybr and
TypingWeb available online, that help you learn fast typing.
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7. Practice Keyboard Shortcuts

Learning keyboard shortcuts can be really helpful on test day. The word
processor on the GRE is quite basic in nature. Youll have basic keyboard
functions, plus three other features: cut, copy, paste, and undo. And thats
all. No other shortcuts or spell checks or other advanced features like bold
and underline. Now, these functions work exactly as they do on your
computer. You can cut text from a portion of your essay and paste it in at a
different point. Or you can use undo (Ctrl + Z) to delete your previous
typing. Use these features and reduce the time you spend on editing your
essay.
8. Practice! Practice! Practice!

As straightforward as it gets. Just as with the other sections on the GRE,
the more you practice writing long essays at home, the higher you score on
test day. But there is a catch here: you should practice typing essays on a
computer keyboard. This is rather important, because most of us today use
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laptops and tablet phones to communicate, and the keyboards we normally

use differ greatly from those of the desktop computers. You will have to
type on a desktop computer keyboard on test day, and it is recommended
that you get used to the new keyboard at home itself.
9. Read The Entire AWA Question Pool

We generally dont recommend this to every student, since most of them
dont have the time to. But if your test is months away from now, it will do
you a world of good if you can go through each and every AWA question
from the ETS Essay Pool. There are separate question pools for Issue
Essays and Argument Essays, and they are not too many in number. You
could probably finish them all in a month or two.
Remember that the AWA questions you will see on test day will be from
these essay pools only. So, it wont hurt to check them all out.
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CHAPTER 8
Top 101 Transitional Words and

Phrases You Should Use to
Score a 6.0 on the AWA Section
Turn your average essay into a phenomenal piece of
literature with these top transitional words. Use these
words and phrases and your essay will read like a
great story.
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The difference between a normal essay and a great essay, is the way it is
written. Normal essays are lifeless, and they bore readers a few lines into
the story. But on the other hand, great essays meticulously use persuasive
language, and gain the readers attention. In addition to writing
compelling reasons and connecting stories, you should also include
powerful vocabulary, if you want to get a perfect score. Since a lot of
students who take the GRE are non-native speakers, they will not be able
to naturally write essays that sound truly professional.
So, here are some of the words and phrases you should be using when you
write your AWA essays. You might have seen these words countless times
in books, newspapers, or magazines. But it is time for you to include them
in your writings, and make your essays sound professional.
Supporting words for instance, for example, to illustrate, to
demonstrate, such as, particularly, specifically, notably
Additional support moreover, furthermore, in addition, similarly, in
the same way, with respect to, as well as
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Putting same idea in a different way in other words, to put it

simply, in view of this, with this in mind, to put it differently, that is to say
Opposing words by contrast, on the other hand, in comparison, on the
contrary, instead, though, while, despite, although
Consequential words as a result, accordingly, thereupon, thence,
thus, because, for this reason, in effect
Time indicating words immediately, formerly, currently, meanwhile,
eventually, first, second, finally, previously, henceforth, in due time,
subsequently
Certainty words without doubt, most importantly, indubitably,
undoubtedly, needless to say
Comparison words in comparison, however, likewise, even so,
nevertheless, nonetheless, all the same
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Positive words magnificent, grandeur, magnanimous, phenomenal,

marvelous, prodigious, formidable, notable, glorious, wonderful,
paramount, sublime, flamboyant
Negative words unfounded, doubtful, questionable, oversimplified,
problematic, unconvincing, unacceptable, biased, unreliable, defective,
presumptuous, vague, unwarranted, weak
Against the point of view words one cannot deny that, to be fair, it
could be argued that, granted, admittedly, a stark contrast, as contrasted
with, on second thoughts
Concluding words in summary, consequently, hence, in closing, in
conclusion, therefore, ultimately, to summarize, on the whole, for the
aforementioned reasons
Ultimately, it is the content of the essay that really matters. If you are able
to write an astounding essay, you really dont need any advanced words or
phrases. But since it is a herculean task for many students, especially the
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non-native students, to write a perfectly professional essay in under 30

minutes, it would definitely help if some of these words are included.
But at the same time, students should be careful enough to not simply
scatter these words across the essay as they please. These words and
phrases should really fit in the context of the essay, and the sentences must
smoothly integrate into one another. Hence, refrain from using these
words and phrases improperly, and learn when and where to use them in
your AWA essay.
CHAPTER 9
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27 Mistakes You Should Avoid

When Writing Your AWA Essays
Better safe than sorry. Learning where you can falter
will help you be aware. Avoiding these 27 mistakes will
help you get a higher score on the AWA section.
Until now, we have discussed numerous techniques and strategies to score

a perfect 6.0 on the AWA section. But, we think it would be beneficial if
you have all the probable mistakes at one place, so you can safely avoid
them all at once. Here are the 27 mistakes that you should strictly avoid
while writing your AWA essays. Now, some of these points may sound
repetitive since we have already discussed a lot up until now, but think of
this as a checklist that can help you figure out the danger zones and
possible pitfalls.
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1. Writing a clich ridden essay

While using clich phrases and sentences may seem like an idea choice for
anyone writing an essay, it would more often than not be detrimental to
someone writing the GRE. Understanding the fact that hundreds of
thousands of students write the same essays every year, you should try and
be a bit different, a bit unique. Using the same examples that everyone
uses really wont help you much, because it only looks like you have lifted
those lines from someone elses passage or an online journal. So, try to use
your own examples, and your own sentences while writing the AWA
essays.
2. Not citing the original author

Sometimes, it would really help if you can use a killer essay quote or
two, in your AWA essays. But it is important to remember that you should
cite the original author, lest there is chance that you might come off as
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pretentious. Whenever you are quoting someones lines, it is customary to

give them the credit. Doing this will not only reinforce your image as a
trustworthy individual, but also gives the grader an impression that you
are an intellectual person. After all, only uber-smart people can remember
great quotes along with their authors names.
3. Writing mixed-up paragraphs

If you remember what we discussed about writing and organization in the
previous chapters, you should recollect the fact that you must allocate
separate paragraphs for every idea or point that you are writing about.
Often times, test takers tend to stuff a paragraph with two or three ideas,
and end up mixing it up pretty badly. This can often cause confusion, not
only to the grader, but also to you. Discussing more than one point in a
single paragraph is not at all recommended. Dumping all ideas into a
single paragraph is a very bad idea, and shows poor organization. So, make
it a point to not mix up paragraphs.
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4. Giving away too much in the intro

The most important aspect about writing an article or an essay is to avoid
giving away too much information in the very beginning itself. Dont
believe us? Ask any content marketer. The key to writing exceptional
essays is to keep the reader intrigued until the last word. This is one of the
reasons why we hate our textbooks but love fiction novels: the latter simply
keep you interested until the end. So, you might want to implement the
same strategy when writing your essays. Do not give away too many key
points, or at least your main idea, in the first paragraph itself. There are
separate paragraph for that.
5. Using irrelevant examples

Just as we already discussed multiple times throughout this guide, avoid
using irrelevant examples as much as you can. Sometimes it is fine to make
up your own examples, but remember that they should be very relevant to
the rest of the essay. So, as much as you can, try and come up with strong
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and concrete examples to support your point of view.
6. Not summarizing effectively

One of the more overlooked mistakes in writing is that many test takers
tend to not summarize their essays properly. A perfect conclusion
paragraph not only includes the main idea or point of view that you chose
to side with, but also has a neat summary of all the points that have
already been discussed in the previous paragraphs. Now, this doesnt
mean you need to write them all over again, but a quick conclusive line
about each paragraph would do you a world of good.
7. Introducing new points in the conclusion

Yes, this happens quite often, and is one of the major reasons why many
are not getting close to that perfect AWA score. Sometimes, you finish off
writing the entire body of the essay, and move on to the conclusion
paragraph. As you are writing it, you are struck with a new point or an
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idea that you think should be on the essay at all costs. So, what do you do?
You somehow try to fit that point somewhere in the conclusion paragraph,
and you think it will add to your existing robust set of points. But guess
what? You havent backed it up properly anywhere in the essay, and hence
the entire point sounds irrelevant or insufficient at that point of time. So,
avoid introducing new ideas or points in the last paragraph. Be content
with what you have already written.
8. Writing immediately
If you have read the previous chapters thoroughly, you would understand
that there is a step by step process that you need to follow in order to get
closer to the 6.0 score. But, a majority of the students give in to the
temporal pressure, and start off writing as soon as they read the question.
This will only lead to chaos in the next few minutes, as you will find your
head clogged with ideas. So, give it a minute or two, and think about what
you are going to write, before you start typing.
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9. Not ideating correctly

A poorly presented idea is as good as an idea not presented at all.
Whatever point it is that you are trying to make, you should make it
correctly. An improper presentation, or a poorly organized idea will only
make your essay sound more amateur that anything else.
10. Taking too much time for ideation

As straightforward as it can it, time is the most valuable resource on the
GRE. Taking too much time just to gather ideas is not at all good for your
score. Almost all the essays you will see on the GRE are quite simple to
criticize, and anyone with decent practice can crack the code easily. So, in
order to avoid wasting too much time trying to ideate, you should do a bit
of practice at home.
11. Not sticking to one side

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Weve already said it out: Go negative! There is no way an average GRE

test taker can write a perfectly balanced essay response in under 30
minutes, which is why most of them tend to sway towards a particular
side. You should follow suit, if you want to score higher on the AWA
section. Not sticking to any one of the sides shows that you are too afraid
to stand your ground, or that you are too confused to pick a side. Neither
of this is a good image for you, so always pick a side no matter what.
12. Not using templates/structure

There are a few basic structures for writing the AWA, and adopting them
would be a good idea, since you dont have to reinvent the wheel all over
again. We have already done most of the hard work for you, and provided
some basic structures and templates that you can easily follow. If you cant
make good use of them, at least try to create your own organization or
structure. Otherwise, your essay response ends up being too clumsy to
understand.
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13. Not being specic enough

Whichever side you choose to take, or whatever point you are trying to
make, be specific. Never try to beat around the bush and expect to get away
with. You are not a politician. Never use vague statements that only lead
the grader to more confusion. Be very specific about your opinions, and
have a clear idea of what exactly you are going to write, even if it might
sound a bit negative, or a bit harsh on the author.
14. Using complex words just for the sake of using

To paraphrase Maya Angelous epic quote, You should use a word only if
you know what it exactly means. Keep this in mind at all times. Do not use
a word just for the sake of using, and end up sounding like a novice writer
who is trying to impress people he doesnt know. Instead, use nice little
words that sound simple and professional enough to get you a good score.
15. Not using transitional words

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Your essay should read like a story. Every paragraph that you write should
have a smooth beginning and a smooth ending, thus making the entire
essay readable. This can only happen when you use transitional words and
phrases that are like bridges linking one paragraph with another. Not
using transitional words can make your prompt sound abrupt and hence,
not perfect.
16. Not sounding condent enough

Whether it is an Issue essay or an Argument essay, you are asked to give
your opinion. Which means, you are entitled to write whatever it is that
you have in mind. Nobody is going to argue, or disagree with you, so there
is no need to get defensive at all. Using words such as I think, in my
opinion, perhaps, Maybe, etc., will give the reader the impression that
you are not confident enough to put your ideas forth. So, be more
confident, and more authoritative when you are writing your opinions.
Write like an expert editor of a newspaper, not like a newly recruited
intern.
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17. Using the word I very often

While it is perfectly alright to sound like an expert, it is not alright to sound
narcissistic and repetitive. A lot of students use the word I way too often
that it puts the reader off. Yes, everybody already knows that it is you who
wrote the essay and that all the ideas presented in the essay are yours.
There is no point in saying I think this, or I would do that etc. A few
times is fine, but too many times isnt welcome at all.
18. Using the same sentence structure over and

over again
If you remember what we said earlier, sentence variety is as important as
anything else. Using monotonous sentence structures or repetitive phrases
throughout the essay is a pretty bad idea, since it tells the reader that you,
as a writer, lack variety, or creativity. So, try to rephrase the same
sentences and write something else that means the same. Like many other
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things in life, this comes with a lot of practice.
19. Not including a counter argument

Agreeing with the author to some extent will give the grader a great
impression about you as a writer, but if you keep on agreeing with the
authors points of view, without including any new information from your
side, you will surely come off as someone without any knowledge about the
given subject. Given the fact that almost all essays come from a wide range
of topics, and that they dont need any special prior knowledge, it would be
bad if you cannot counter the authors deliberately wrong point of view
along with your two cents.
20. Contradicting yourself

With so many arguments and counter arguments clogged inside your
mind, and with the speeding clock on the screen, it is possible that you
somehow contradict your own argument. Sometimes, when writing the
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third or the fourth paragraphs, test takers contradict their own opinions or
points of view that they put forward in the first one or two paragraphs.
This clearly shows that you get confused easily. So, dont contradict your
own statements, and always read what you have written.
21. Letting writers block take over your AWA

Writers block is when an author loses the ability to write something new.
This has happened to the greatest of writers, and will probably happen to
you too, if you dont practice well enough before the test. If you are
someone who is not used to writing a lot, then should start practicing for
the AWA, unless you want to end up staring at the screen pondering how
to begin the essay.
22. Affecting other sections due to mistakes in

AWA
Also you already know, you will face the AWA section first. Dont let the
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AWA section set the tone for the rest of the test. Sometimes AWA goes
great, and youll feel extremely confident (or overconfident) about the
remaining sections. Sometimes, you may not do well on the AWA and feel
gusted about yourself, which affects the other sections. So, try to stay
unaffected by the result. Remember; you are the one who sets the tone,
not a couple of essay questions.
23. Focusing a lot on grammar and vocabulary

Even though grammar and vocabulary are really important when it comes
to scoring higher on the AWA, you should not overstress their importance.
Write whatever you can and as much as you can. Do not bother about silly
grammatical errors or workaday vocabulary. Once you think you are done
with writing, then go back and read everything, correct those grammatical
mistakes, or replace those boring words with good vocabulary. But, do it
only once you are done with the essay.
24. Writing unnecessarily long sentences

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Mark Twain once said If I had more time, I would have written a shorter
letter. That shows how difficult it is to write short and concise sentences.
Anybody can write long gibberish in a short time, but it takes lots of
practice, time and talent to keep it simple. Now, even though you are not
blessed with a lot of time during the GRE test, you should try to minimize
your sentences to make them sound smarter. Dont try to use filler words
or phrases so you could increase the word count. Quality trumps quantity
any day.
25. Using slang language.

Writing as if you are chatting with a friend is something that happens quite
often during exams. Using chat language and shortened forms of words
like u, hw, y, etc. is bound to happen, especially if you are not very adept at
writing often. If however, you find yourself using these sort of words in
your essay, your chances of getting a good AWA score will rapidly
decrease. So, it wouldnt hurt to do a bit of practice at home before test
day.
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26. Attacking the issue task as if its an argument

Or vice versa. It is possible to get confused between an issue essay and an
argument and test takers often mistake one for the other. This could be the
gravest mistake you will ever make on the AWA section, because if you
cannot understand whether the given question is an Issue or an Argument
task, then you cannot write a proper response at all. So, make sure you
dont get confused between the two essay formats or structures, and that
you have a clear understanding of both the question types.
27. Not leaving time for proofreading

Proofreading is often neglected because test takers simply dont have the
time. They think they cannot afford to waste one or two minutes
proofreading the essay, while they can use the same time to write an
additional sentence or two. But as a matter of fact, a perfect 400 word
essay gets a higher score than an imperfect 450 word essay. So, you should
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rather focus on improving what you have already written, and try to spend
at least three to four minutes on proofreading what you have written.
So, this is the most comprehensive list of mistakes that you can avoid on
the AWA section of the GRE. With this, we come to the end of this ultimate
guide. And if this were any other guide, we would have finished it here. But
since this is an advanced guide for the AWA, we would like to give you
something special. Something that is exclusive to only you. In our bonus
chapter, we would like to give you a bonus: A couple of super-secret
templates that you can use, if you want to speed up your AWA preparation.
CHAPTER 10
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Bonus Chapter Mind-Blowing

Templates to Score a 6.0 on the
AWA Section
The advanced AWA Essay templates you will ever find
on the internet. These AWA templates are designed to
give you an unfair advantage on test day.
This bonus chapter includes mind boggling AWA Essay templates that will
get you a sure shot 6.0 score. We have created these templates after
examining several hundreds of AWA essays and responses from students
across the world. This chapter contains both AWA Issue Essay Template
and AWA Argument Essay Template separately. Using these templates will
get you guaranteed results, and you will see a perfect 6.0 score on your
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own essays, guaranteed.

NOTE: But wait! Just because we have given you a couple of templates, it
doesnt mean that you just copy the same content during your actual GRE
test. Remember, this website gets thousands of visitors every day, and if
every single one of you use the same template, very soon, all your AWA
scores will be cancelled and your essay response will be held for
plagiarism. We definitely dont want that to happen, do we? So, better be
careful.
We strongly advise you to use these templates as frameworks, and use
them to create your own templates for both the essay questions. The
templates provided here are just for reference, and it will only help you if
you create similar templates for yourself, rather than using the ones given
here.
Download the AWA essay template right now!
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Conclusion
So, thats about it. We have come to an end of this epic guide to ace the
analytical writing section on the GRE. We have discussed about 71
invaluable strategies that you could use to improve your writing skills, and
thereby get a perfect score on the AWA section.
This is by far the most comprehensive GRE Analytical Writing guide in the
world. It was created to help you ace the Analytical Writing section in the
GRE. If you think this is very helpful, or if you really loved it, share it
with your friends right now! Our goal is to help as many students as we
can. So what are you waiting for? Go share or tweet the living daylights
out of this guide!
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Chapters

The Advanced Guide to

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Written By Jitta & Sachin

Introduction to GRE Analytical

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Getting to know everything about the writing section

Getting a 99 percentile score on either of Verbal and Quant sections on the

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What is the AWA all about?

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How important is the AWA?

What is the score range for AWA?

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Few to no flaws in the essay.

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demonstrating little control of the elements of writing, and displaying the

2.0 Seriously Flawed

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Demonstrates no understanding of the main features of the

1.0 Fundamentally Decient

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Contains severe and persistent errors in language and sentence

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How is the AWA graded?

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university faculty members from various subject matter areas, including

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What do graders look for in your AWA essays?

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The 7 Elements Graders Look For:

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5. Language and Grammar

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a compelling essay is its ability to convince the reader by means of sound

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Should you skip the AWA section during practice?

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Number 1 Reason Why Practicing GRE AWA is Important: Inated

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How Long Should My Essay Be?

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Categorization of GRE Essay Topics

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How do I get ideas for the essay?

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How to get your essays graded?

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are taking a practice test at home.