Chapters
The Advanced Guide to
GRE Analytical Writing
71 Mind-Blowing Tips, Techniques, and Strategies
to Score a Perfect 6.0 on the AWA
Introduction to GRE Analytical
Writing
Written By Jitta & Sachin
“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 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.
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
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 isn’t really as tough as it seems. It is only that you don’t 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 isn’t 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
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.
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 won’t 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
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
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
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
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:
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 Deficient
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.
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.
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 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.
Here’s 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.
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 isn’t the only factor. You will have to
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
Ask yourselves these two questions when you are writing the essays. What are you trying to say? What’s 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;
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 aren’t any sudden twists in your
response, it will make the grader’s 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
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 doesn’t 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
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 isn’t 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. There’s 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, don’t 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.
5. Language and Grammar
Though officially ETS says you may have minor errors in the essay copy, that doesn’t 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. Don’t 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
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 doesn’t 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
the bill and don’t 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 you’re 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, it’s not worth investing time on something they are very confident about. But, there are a few vital points that they don’t realize. We’ve
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.
Number 1 Reason Why Practicing GRE AWA is Important: Inflated
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 aren’t accustomed to. Now, if you skip the essay section during practice, you’ll 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
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? It’s that extra one hour of concentration that
requires sudden attention from your brain, which it sadly isn’t ready for. This is exactly why thousands of students score very low on their last two to three sections. They simply aren’t ready for the extra time, because their brains feel tired already. So, if you don’t skip the essay during practice,
you’ll 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 won’t be able to cover every
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 won’t 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.
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. Don’t ask us why. The research shows that’s 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
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 isn’t 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, it’s safe to say that 500-600 is what you should be looking at.
If you’d like to know more about the GRE essay length, we’ve done a separate post on that. Go check it out now.
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. Isn’t that a great advantage for you? You can get a perfect 6.0 score very easily!
But there’s a catch! You were expecting a few, aren’t 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, there’s 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.
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?
support mails by students around the world. It’s because a large number of issue and argument prompts on the official essay pool are hard to
understand correctly. And when you don’t 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
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
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. We’ve
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.
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, we’re pretty sure that the ETS Score It Now feature will get you an accurate score, because well, it’s 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 don’t 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
you get better marks. They can help you identify the mistakes you did not find obvious enough, and you also get an outsider’s 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
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 don’t 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
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 wouldn’t 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.
GMATAWA.com
Alright. We’ve 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, there’s 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.
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.
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) 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 aren’t 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,
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, let’s 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 author’s point of view, by providing sufficient evidences, and by asking logical questions.
2. General Topic vs. Specific 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
doesn’t 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 author’s 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
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
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.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your
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.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you 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.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you 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
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
author’s 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 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 author’s 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
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
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
author’s point of view. Since more often than not the author’s point of view will be flawed, you will have lots of points to write, and it becomes easier for you to attack the author’s 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
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.
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.
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
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 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.
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 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
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 don’t maintain quality, you might come off as someone who is just trying to impress but is unable to
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. We’ll 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 reader’s opinion. So, make sure you always look for supporting evidences, and provide them wherever needed.
Like discussed erstwhile, you’re going to have to come up with a lot of
examples that help illustrate the point you’re 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
because students tend to think that they can outsmart the grader by using fancy sounding words once in a while. While doing 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. 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 wouldn’t 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
practice test, and see if your essays have all of these.
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.”
…
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
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.
Obviously, this must be your first step. But you don’t 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
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 won’t 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 you’ve 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 you’ve 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
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. Don’t 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 don’t 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
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
Don’t 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.
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:
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
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 don’t have difficulty with writing, but they have trouble figuring out what exactly they are trying to say. So if you’ve completed the previous steps, you should
know more or less what it is that you want to say about the topic.
Proofreading is another step that is often neglected, mainly because test takers don’t 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 don’t have a spell checker on the AWA, you don’t 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.
own argument, the Analysis of an Argument essay measures your ability to evaluate someone else’s 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 (it’s 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:
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
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:
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
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
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.
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 essay’s purpose
INTRODUCTION PARAGRAPH
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
The conclusion paragraph of an argument essay doesn’t 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.
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.
Examples and Analyses of
Perfect 6.0 AWA Essays
“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.
