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How to allocate time for your AWA- Argument Task?

The Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) consists of the Issue Task and the Argument Task and appears
at the very beginning of the GRE Test. Each of the tasks tests a different skill; the Issue Task tests your
ability to back up your opinion with evidence and reasoning and the Argument Task tests your ability to
critique an argument on the basis of formal logic and reasoning.

The "Analyze an Argument" task assesses your ability to understand, analyze and evaluate arguments
according to specific instructions and to convey your evaluation clearly in your writing. Each topic
consists of a brief passage in which the author makes a case for some course of action or interpretation
of events by presenting claims backed by reasons and evidence. The task tests your ability to produce a
well-crafted response within a given time frame.

Your task is to discuss the logical soundness of the author's case by critically examining the line of
reasoning and the use of evidence.

The first and foremost thing that you must understand and realize is that in an Analyze the Argument
Task, you are expected to examine the structure and content of the argument and comment on its
soundness. You are not expected to agree or disagree with its propositions or the accuracy of the
statements. Neither are you expected to express your views on the subject discussed as in the Issue
Task.

Rather, you are expected to comment on validity of the evidence, support or proof present in argument,
consider what is explicitly stated, claimed or concluded, question the assumptions that undergird the
argument, and the implications of the above.

You should also consider the line of reasoning adopted – the method by which the jump from stated
facts to conclusion is accomplished by the author and all the intermediate steps involved in this jump –
and verify if all these movement from one step to another is logical.

In short, you are being asked to evaluate the logical soundness of an argument of another writer and, in
doing so, to demonstrate the critical thinking, perceptive reading and analytical writing skills that
university faculty consider important for success in graduate school.

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The task has a time limit of 30 minutes, and it is necessary for you to get your act together and complete
your essay within the given time frame. This means that you have to allocate time for planning,
organizing and writing your essay. We will see further the best way of doing it.

Writing of the essay for the Argument Task can be divided into the following steps.

1. Evaluate the Argument – Identify the conclusion, premises and assumptions.

2. Organize – Identify the weakest assumptions, flawed chain of reasoning, and unsupported
evidences and construct well-defined paragraphs in which each of these are attacked.

3. Write – Type the Essay.

4. Proof – Check for Errors.

The first step in the case of an Argument Task is to read the argument carefully and evaluate it. By this
we mean that you should try and identify the conclusion and the premises. The conclusion may be
present at the beginning of an argument or towards the end or even in the middle. The conclusion is
identified by understanding the argument and not by the location or position of the (conclusion)
statement in the argument.

The next step is to identify the premises in the argument – these are the statements which explicit state
facts or evidences in the argument. Even if these facts and evidences are incorrect as per our current
understanding and progress in those fields of knowledge.

Finally, you should identify the assumptions that lead the premise(s) to the conclusion. Identifying the
assumptions is important because they undergird any argument and make it plausible. This step should
take a maximum of 5 minutes, and no more than that.

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The second step is to make a list of all the flaws in the argument.

Identify the weakest assumptions and start building the essay around it. Any argument is as strong or
weak as its assumptions are. If the assumptions are weak, so is the argument. Stronger assumptions are
difficult to critique. So make a list of assumptions from the weak to the strong, and you can then build
your essay beginning with it, and then take the next assumption and critique it in the next paragraph.

Sometimes the assumptions might be valid, but the chains of reasoning might be flawed. You should
find out the flawed chains of reasoning that are used to move from the premises to the given
conclusion. Exposing these chinks in the links can help you to invalidate the soundness of the argument.

You can also look for evidences which are given without much support for them. Though it is very
difficult to find these types of evidences in all arguments, you might sometimes come across them in a
few arguments and there is no reason you should lose the opportunity to expose them, if you see them.

This step can take a maximum of 10 minutes.

There might also be overlap of this step with previous step.

The third step is to organize and write the essay.

You select 3-4 of the greatest flaws in the argument – these may include weak assumptions, flawed
chains of reasoning or unsupported evidences and build the essay around it. You should attack at least
two assumptions and if you can include flawed reasoning as well, that would be great.

You should construct well-defined paragraphs and attack one of the flaws in each paragraph. You should
point out how the author bases his argument on weak assumptions and how if he had given more
explicit information, the argument would have held well. In case of flawed reasoning, you should
indicate how if the reasoning had not proceeded on such flawed lines, the argument would have had a
different conclusion. You should also mention the proper method of reasoning that should be followed.
You should spend a maximum of 10 minutes in this step. This step can overlap with the previous step,
and thus you might end up taking around 20 minutes to finish both these steps.

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There would be an overlap between steps two and three, for you might end up identifying new
assumptions and flawed reasoning even as you start organizing and writing the essay. You can use the
(primitive) editor to form new paragraphs and build them around any new identified flaws.

The last step is proof reading. This is an important step, and most miss it, only to regret later. First, you
need to ensure that the introduction and conclusion are essentially saying the same thing. You can then
go through the essay to see if your critique of the argument is correct. Pay attention to the conclusion
to see if it clearly summarizes why the argument is not sound. You can also weed out egregious spelling
and grammatical errors at this stage. You can allocate a maximum of 3 minutes for this step.

Thus, the final time budget would look like this:

1. Evaluate the Argument – 3 – 5 minutes.

2. Organize – 10 – 12 minutes

3. Write – 10 – 12 minutes

4. Proof – 1 – 2 minutes

It is advisable to follow the lower bounds indicated in the time budget, and if you exceed them, you
need to make up in the subsequent steps. You need to allocate at least one minute for proof-reading.

And do practice from the pool of Argument Tasks to develop the time sense, and use notepad while
doing so. So that on D-Day, you are ready to go with no anxieties and butterflies in your stomach.

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