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Gre Analytical Writing Guide
Gre Analytical Writing Guide
Gre Analytical Writing Guide
to
GRE Analytical Writing
71 Mind-Blowing Tips,
Techniques, and Strategies
to Score a Perfect 6.0 on the AWA
CHAPTER 1
Introduction to GRE
Analytical Writing MENU
…
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 isn’t 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.
6.0 – Outstanding:
transitions.
5.0 – Strong
the critique.
major flaws.
4.0 – Adequate
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be missing.
3.0 – Limited
organization of ideas.
made.
structure.
0.0 – Unscorable
English.
characters.
No response.
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
isn’t the only factor. You will have to take
many other factors into consideration, if you
are looking to get 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.
2. Structure
3. Sentence Variety
4. Vocabulary
6. Reasoning
7. Evidence
Education
Arts
Government/Politics
Philosophy
Graded
ETS Score It Now!
Self-Evaluation
Internet Strangers
GMATAWA.com
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.”
…
The Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA)
MENU
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.
position.
CHAPTER 3
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.”
Organization
Organization is given the foremost
importance by many graders. And it isn’t that
hard to understand why. Essays that are well
organized are, in fact, easy to read. That’s
important because you don’t want to make
the grader’s 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.
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
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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 don’t 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 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
MENU
will be considered as a voracious writer in
general. These are the abilities that are
usually likely to impress a grader.
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 reader’s
opinion. So, make sure you always look for
supporting evidences, and provide them
wherever needed.
Examples MENU
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 because students tend to think that
they can outsmart the grader by using fancy
sounding words once in a while. While doing
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this doesn’t 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, don’t hurt your score by using
words whose spellings you don’t know.
Speed
The word processor on the GRE is quite basic
in nature. You’ll have basic keyboard
functions, plus three other features: cut, copy,
paste, and undo. And that’s 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.
MENU
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.
CHAPTER 4
…
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.
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5. Conclusion
1. Introduction
side
side
6. Conclusion
1. Introduction
Step 6: Proofread
the argument
assumptions
3. Strengthen the argument by bolstering the
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assumptions
1. Introduction
Step 5: Write
B O DY PA R A G R A P H S
A description of an assumption
assumption
C O N C L U S I O N PA R A G R A P H
Step 6: Proofread
CHAPTER 5
Examples and
Analyses of Perfect
6.0 AWA Essays MENU
…
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.
Explanation:
Essay:
Explanation:
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 MENU
be a cakewalk.
…
In order to confuse test takers, the AWA
essays will always contain some 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:
group.
a certain outcome
causation)
unrepresentative statistics
6. Relying on biased or tainted data (methods for
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collecting data must be unbiased and the poll
made?
CHAPTER 7
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
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score on the GRE, let alone on the AWA. 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.
That’s right, 20 minutes only.
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 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
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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
author’s point of view, than to take his/her
side.
4. Don’t 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.
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.
CHAPTER 8
…
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
MENU
few lines into the story. But on the other hand,
great essays meticulously use persuasive
language, and gain the reader’s 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.
CHAPTER 9
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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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
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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.
it’s 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 don’t get confused
between the two essay formats or structures,
and that you have a clear understanding of
both the question types.
CHAPTER 10
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 MENU
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 own essays, guaranteed.
Conclusion
So, that’s 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.
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