The GRE Argument Writing Task

 

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The GRE Argument writing task is designed to test your critical-reasoning skills as well as your writing skills. Your task is to critique the stated argument in terms of its cogency (logical soundness) and in terms of the strength of the evidence offered in support of the argument.

The Argument essay prompt consists of two elements:

The directive: a brief instruction for responding to the argument (the directive is always the same)

An argument: a paragraph-length passage, which presents an argument (usually introduced as a quotation from some fictitious source)

Here's an Argument prompt that is similar to the ones on the actual GRE. Keep in mind, however, that it is not one of the official topics, so you won't see this one on the actual exam. (The testing service does not permit reprint of its official Analytical Writing topics.)

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument.

The following appeared in a memorandum issued by the human-resources department of Capital Bank: "Up until now, Capital Bank has required that its employees wear suits at all times while at work. Last month, Capital’s employee absenteeism and turnover rates both reached all-time highs. In order to reverse these trends, Capital should adopt a company-wide "casual Friday" policy, under which all employees would be permitted, and even encouraged, to dress casually for work every Friday. After all, most companies in the software industry allow their workers to dress casually for work anytime they want; and those workers often remark that this policy enhances their job satisfaction. Morevoer, most software firms experience lower rates of employee absenteeism and turnover than companies in other industries, including banking."

Now here's a sample response to this Argument prompt. As you read the response, keep in mind:

• Each one of the three body paragraphs (which exclude the introductory and concluding paragraphs) isolates and discusses a distinct flaw in the argument. A typical GRE argument will contain 3-4 major reasoning flaws.

• This essay is brief enough — about 425 words — to compose and type in 30 minutes.

• This response meets all the ETS criteria for a score of 6 — the highest possible score.

• This essay was not written under a strict time limit. So don't worry if your practice essays don't turn out as polished as this one. Rest assured: You can attain a top score of 6 on your Argument essay even if contains minor flaws in grammar, diction, spelling, and so forth.

Sample Response

This argument concludes that a "casual Friday" policy would reverse Capital Bank’s high absentee and turnover rates. This conclusion, based solely on certain comparisons with the software industry, is tenuous at best. The memo fails to address important differences between the two industries and between dress codes, other possible reasons for Capital’s problems, and potential problems with the cited statistics.

First, the memo assumes that since software workers prefer casual attire, so would bank employees. But this might not be so. People attracted to finance jobs are generally more oriented toward authority and wealth, and thus prefer to wear suits to impress and intimidate. Therefore, a "casual Friday" policy might have no positive impact on morale at Capital. It might even backfire, prompting even more workers to leave the company. The memo also assumes that a "casual Friday" policy is similar enough to the software industry’s dress codes to have the same effect on job satisfaction. But would just one casual day per week be enough to reduce absenteeism and turnover? Possibly not.

Next, the memo assumes that the dress code is to blame for Capital’s high absentee and turnover rates, without considering other possible explanations. A high absentee rate might be due instead to other working conditions, such as poor ventilation or cafeteria food, while a high turnover rate might be explained by such factors as inadequate salaries or benefits. Since the memo hasn’t ruled out these sorts of possibilities, the conclusion that a "casual Friday" policy will solve Capital’s problems is, at best, weak.

Finally, the statistics cited in the memo seem unreliable. Before we can draw any firm conclusions from "remarks" made "often" by software workers, the remarks must be backed up by a proper survey of a sufficiently large, representative sample. Nor is it fair to draw any firm conclusions about employee absenteeism and turnover from a single month’s data. Last month’s data might have been a one-time-only spike (to which the memo’s author over-reacted). Even if not, the monthly variation in itself tends to show that the dress code, which has remained the same, is not to blame for last month’s data.

In sum, the memo has not shown that worker preferences and dress codes in the software industry are similar enough to Capital’s workers and the proposed policy to ensure that the "casual Friday" policy will have the desired impact at Capital. Nor has the author convinced me that Capital’s current dress code is the actual cause of the absentee and turnover problems in the first place.