Analytical Writing Task in GRE

[CogSciPaul]

Hey everyone. I plan on doing my GRE soon, but I'm quite worried about the Analytical writing section.

What essay topics did you get? I just want to get a general idea of what kind of essay they will ask.

[peter]

Maybe you've seen this already, but it has two sample topics for the analytical writing section. It also has graded responses, beginning on page 56. I haven't taken the test, so I can't give you any topics that have actually been assigned.

1. "Our declining environment may bring the people of the world together as no politician, philosopher, or war ever could. Environmental problems are global in scope and respect no nation's boundaries. Therefore, people are faced with the choice of unity and cooperation on the one hand or disunity and a common tragedy on the other."

2. "Both the development of technological tools and the uses to which humanity has put them have created modern civilizations in which loneliness is ever increasing."

[llamacheez]

I think they publish all of the questions online. I tried a quick search and couldn't find it, but I remember that.

[danreil]

I remember my issue essay (where they give you a quote and you respond to it). The quote was something about society working better when its citizens don't question the authority of its leaders. I argued against it and used mainly examples from the big dictatorships of the twentieth century.

[Jahoclave]

It was something about advertising making people happy. All those years of studying marxist theory kind of paid off there.

[sikyon]

http://www.ets.org/gre/general/prepare/ ... cal/issues

http://www.ets.org/gre/general/prepare/ ... /argument/

Enjoy.

It's ALOT of topics but if you have time, it is good pratice to look at one and try to come up with a few examples/counterexamples. My essay got marked well but it was not exactly well written (I have bad first drafts) but I think they look more at the quality and quantity of ideas you can come up with rather than how well you can write (though this is important, they spend like a minute marking it so they're not going to catch anything subtle). Just spam ideas at them and provide abit of evidence to support it, and summarize it properly.