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Preparing for the GRE Essays
Writing essays under timed conditions can be a trying experience and can raise your anxiety to a point where you find it difficult to perform well. Adding to this anxiety is the overwhelming number of possible topics. The fact that ETS has pre-disclosed all of the topics actually increases test anxiety, since you might feel that you're at a competitive disadvantage unless you're ready for each and every one of the questions. Here are my recommendations for minimizing this anxiety and for making the best use of the time you have to get ready for GRE Analytical Writing.

Don’t try to memorize my sample essays.

If you actually were to memorize each and every sample essay in Parts 2 and 3 of my book and reproduce any two of them on the actual exam, you would well deserve the highest possible score, just for the effort! Of course, that’s my opinion. Unfortunately, that’s not the way the folks at ETS view things. Be forewarned: GRE readers will have access to my book and are likely to recognize plagiarism when they see it. There’s nothing wrong with borrowing ideas, reasons, and transitional phrases from my sample essays. Do try, however, to include your own specific examples, especially in your Issue essay; and be sure that in both essays you express your ideas in your own words.

Practice, practice, and practice!

You could read my book cover to cover ten times and still perform poorly on the actual exam. There’s no substitute for putting yourself to the task under simulated exam conditions, especially under the pressure of time. Compose as many practice essays as you reasonably have time for, responding to the official questions. As you do so, keep in mind:

  • Always practice under timed conditions. I cannot overemphasize this point. Unless you are put under the pressure of time, you really won’t be ready for the test.

  • Unless you plan to provide handwritten essays during your exam, always use a word processor for your practice tests. Restrict your use of editing functions to the ones provided on the real exam.

  • Evaluate your practice essays. Practicing isn’t all that helpful if you make the same blunders again and again. After composing an essay, use the official scoring criteria to evaluate it. (Better yet, ask an English professor to evaluate it for you.) Then reflect on your weaknesses, and concentrate on improving in those areas the next time. Don’t worry if your essays don’t turn out as polished as the samples in my book. Concentrate instead on improving your own performance.

Take notes on a variety of Issue topics and Arguments from the official pool.

Download the complete pool of offical Issue topics and Arguments. Select ten to fifteen Issue topics covering diverse themes, and any ten to fifteen Arguments. For each one, spend about 5 minutes brainstorming and making notes. This exercise will go a long way toward ensuring that you don't find yourself paralyzed, or "stuck," during the actual exam.

Take notes on selected essays from Parts 2 and 3 of my book.

For the Issue writing task, identify thematic areas (from the list in Part 1 of my book) with which you’re especially unfamiliar, then get up to speed for these areas by reading the relevant essays in Part 2 of my book. As you read these selected essays:

  • Pick up thesis ideas from the first and last paragraphs of each essay.

  • Make note of reasons you find clearest, most convincing, or most useful.

  • Highlight transition and rhetorical phrases. (Then, as you compose practice essays, make a special effort to incorporate your favorite phrases so that they become part of your natural writing style.)

For the Argument writing task, randomly select as many essays from Part 3 of my book as you reasonably have time to consider. For each essay:

  • Identify each type of reasoning problem that the essay discusses and that you learned about in Part 1 of my book.

  • Highlight transition phrases, which connect the essay's points of critique. (Make a special effort to incorporate similar phrases into your practice essays.)

Consult my other GRE Analytical Writing book.

If your analytical-writing skills need significant improvement, further help is available in my complementary book: Writing Skills for the GRE/GMAT Tests (also published by Peterson's). The book places special emphasis on building rhetorical writing skills, organizing your two GRE essays, and avoiding or correcting common language, grammar, and other mechanical problems. The book also explores additional (less frequent) reasoning problems with Arguments in the official pool. Finally, to help improve and polish your analytical and writing skills, the book contains a variety of reinforcement exercises for each writing task.

Dig even further for Issue ideas and examples—if you have ample time before your exam.

During your exam the testing system will present to you two Issue topics, and you can choose for your response whichever topic you are more familiar or comfortable with. But what if the testing system deals you two unfamiliar cards? Well, keep in mind that, according to the testing service, no special knowledge about any Issue topic is needed to score high on the Issue essay. Also keep in mind that the specific reasons and supporting examples you cite in your Issue essay are only one of several scoring criteria, and by no means the most important.

But if you have ample time to prepare for the exam, by all means go the extra mile (or kilometer). Referring to the list of common Issue themes in Part 1 of my book, roll up your sleeves, and hit the proverbial stacks for Issue ideas. All forms of media are fair game:

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