2 Simple Rules for the AWA - GRE / GMAT Analytical Writing Assessment Tips

I have a theory for the GRE and GMAT

analytical

writing

assessment

and my theory is that most people can get a score of five out of six simply by following two

simple

ideas and that is what this video will cover, what are those? two concepts? clean

writing

and clear ideas and people underestimate this a lot and I see it all the time. I often ask my students to draft essays and I can see what is wrong and why they often get a four or even 4.5 average score by the way. the

analytical

writing

assessment

is about four points well below what I think most people can achieve, which is five or 5.5.

I achieved a 6 out of 6 for the AWA on my GMAT exam and a 5.5 for my GRE simply by following these two ideas. I'm barely prepared for those two evaluations. I'm pretty sure I could have gotten six out of six on both if I had prepared a little more. So what do I mean by clean writing? What most people do is write to the end. last moment of the 30 minutes they have for each essay and what ends up happening is that their writing is full of typos repeated words missing words unclear grammar they didn't leave themselves enough time to proofread their work which I did differently than most students the vast majority is that I left five minutes at the end of each of my essays dedicated solely to rereading and correcting typos, spelling errors, grammatical errors, repeated words, missing words, and all the other things that can go wrong when you rush your ideas.

Sometimes it can be as small as writing the word twice, other times at a key point in your argument you pit one word against another and now it doesn't make any sense, everyone does it, the best writers among us do it all the time. time, so what? What do we do? We always leave ourselves 5-6 minutes at the end of the AWA section to go back and slowly review the reading in your head, maybe the essay to check for all those different types of errors. I bet you will count at least 5 and probably 10 mistakes you made now many of you will agree with this and say our Philip, this is wise advice, but some of you will think that I thought the essay proved your thoughts so well, no its grammar, first of all, which proves both. and secondly, even your thoughts can be clouded by many mistakes if you change a keyword or repeat yourself in a key section, even your thoughts become confusing due to your bad grammar or syntax, maybe you have reached the halfway point . a thought and then you didn't finish it and then you moved on to the next paragraph when you reread that unfinished paragraph you will say oh what I meant was a tilde and you will end your point and writing suddenly. it becomes much cleaner.

I also have a theory that the people who grade these essays and who usually only take a minute or two to do marketing get very annoyed by those pesky errors, especially in the first sentence or the first two or three sentences, so especially avoid Any mistakes in those first one or two sentences, if the first thing you read as an examiner is someone misspells a word or spells the word upside down twice, you're just going to think okay, this person didn't put much effort into it, let's give them a grade. more low. Mark Just like in other areas of life, you want to make a good impression with clean writing, especially in the first paragraph, using great care throughout.

Yes, this means you may not have time to write an extra sentence or two that you could have written, but it's worth it. spend that extra time to go over and do all the things I just said if, by the way, you've written and you're not sure you spelled it correctly, just replace that word with a different word, a word that you do know how to spell. spell, you don't necessarily have to catch every error, they allow minor errors with a score of 5 or 5.5, but you want to minimize the number of errors as much as possible.

You may have noticed that you started five sentences with however and However, you can change some of them into two different words or get rid of them completely. Maybe you notice that all your sentences were very short and it's time for you to make one of the sentences much longer or about two sentences, all these things. You can detect in retrospect by correcting much better than while writing. Well, I think I made my point clear. Stop around the 24th or 25th minute and go back and check your work, of course you can finish the sentence you were working on.

Continue with your conclusion, but take a minimum of four or five minutes to proofread your work. Now, what about the second key concept? Clear ideas. Back to my theory that most people can get a score of five or higher with a little preparation. Let's look at the grading scheme. for a score of five for the GRE pretty much the same applies to the jima Awa to notice how often the grading scheme emphasizes clarity organization and focus how can we take advantage of that instead of going with five ideas that you're blathering on because it was the first thing that came to mind limit yourself to three or four clearer,

simple

r ideas stick to things that you think are common sense that most people would agree with be reasonable give examples discuss things as if they were conversing with a teacher or professor and, above all, make sure you understand what you are trying to say before you write it.

If you don't understand what you're really trying to say and what your argument is, no one else will be able to understand what you're trying to say, so get things straight in your head, even if that means taking a little more time and then expressing those thoughts. ideas with that clarity when that Marcus outline says focused, they want you to stick to the point, start an idea and flesh it out. and then finish, stick to the point you're making, and then make a new paragraph with a new idea in a moment. I'm going to look at a lower scoring answer, one that scored a three on the official ETS website because these are the type of answers I see very often with my students: I genuinely believe that if everyone followed those two techniques, So a score of five is within the reach of the vast majority of students.

I know this video wasn't super technical because I just wanted to do it. A relatively short video conveys the two main things that most students get wrong: they don't have clean writing and they don't use clear enough ideas. If you just embedded that message, then I've done my homework and of course, Of course, if you accepted it, leave a like, leave a comment, and leave a question time to discuss a poor answer, this is a GRE AWA, analyzes a thematic essay question, as people increasingly rely on technology to solve problems, humans' ability to think. by themselves they will surely deteriorate.

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 may or may not be true and explain how these considerations shape your position. This essay got a score of three, and let's imagine we had only four or five minutes to proofread it before submitting it. Try it. How many improvements could we make? In fact, you may want to pause the video. Give yourself five or six. minutes to make some improvements or catch the bugs and see if you find as many as you can, but I'll start, there is no conclusive evidence that the advancement of technology impairs the ability of humans to think well, on the contrary, advances, I think Yeah.

It means that advances in technology have advanced our vast knowledge in many fields, the person that men have is still advancing, so they have advanced our vast knowledge in many fields, opening opportunities for greater understanding and achievements not very clear because understanding and achievement on whose part, but that's okay. we will let, for example, the problem of the debilitating spell on diseases and ailments such as Alzheimer's capital a disease is being resolved slowly they meant that it is being resolved slowly not slowing down it is being resolved by technological advances in stem cell research the future capacity to develop new brain cells, they are suggesting that it is the ability of the brain cells, not our ability to develop brain cells, it is not the brain cells that have the ability, so it is not a clearly thought out idea the future ability to develop new brain cells and the possibility of reversing mean reversing but anyway the possibility of reversing the onset of Alzheimer's is now becoming a reality this shows our initiative as humans to improve our health demonstrates a greater capacity of humans to think that there was no and they wanted to say and it shows This shows our initiative and it shows the greater ability of humans to think, so there are problems with the grammar, but there are also problems with what they are trying to say.

It is not clearly thought out. What is your real point? It shows our initiative to improve our health and the greater ability of humans to think, the greater ability compared to other animals or compared to what thinking is not finished, so it is not a clear idea and it is not a clean grammar, the person needs to stop and think about what I'm actually trying to do. say and I can say it more clearly an aspect where an aspect is not a location, so we don't use the word where an aspect where the capacity of humans can initially be seen as an example of deteriorating minds the capacity of humans is seen as an example of deteriorating minds that is not clear although our ability is not an example of our minds iterating is the use of the Internet and cell phones in the past coma later in the past humans had to search for information in many different environments written one should there be an end after O environments and aspects of life, now humans can sit in a chair, that doesn't make sense, humans in plural would not sit in a chair, it should be that now a human can sit in a chair or now humans can sit in chairs but not humans plural in a chair subject verb agreement and type anything on a computer and get an answer our dependence on this type of technology can be harmful if not regulated I think they meant if not is regulated and they are not regularly misspelled, I think they are referring to replacing other sources of information, such as human interactions and hands-on learning, there should be - with hands in those two words go together, hands in I think that if humans understand that we as a species should not depend so much on computer technology we as a species is not that we as a species we another mistake we as a species will advance further using the opportunity of computer technology, as well as other sources of information outside of a computer, complement our knowledge with access to The Internet is surely a way for technology to solve problems as the human race continually advances, so aside from grammatical issues, do you notice that the person doesn't really develop many examples?

There are not three or four clear ideas separated by paragraphs. It's just stream of consciousness that doesn't really make sense, the grammatical issues make it even more confusing, so if we had read this and improved the grammar and finished off some of those thoughts we could have gotten at least a four or a 4.5 ; However, if the person had had something clearer. ideas and perhaps an additional paragraph or two could have earned a 5 5.5 or higher. I hope this example illustrates the point he was trying to make, which is that the clarity of his ideas is as important as the cleanliness of his writing.

Thank you. Always look out and have a brilliant day.