Comments:
: Dear Mr.Lougheed, : I am a Chinese student. I want to take GRE exam this year. Maybe you know that the new GRE exam will include writing test. It is the first time I write GRE articles. I know I made a lot of mistakes in my essays. And I also heard that you are an expert of writing.So would you please give me some suggestions about my essays? I list them below.Thank you very much! : Issue Topic: : Requirement: Present your perspective on the issue below, using relevant reasons and/or examples to support your views. : ¡°We can usually learn much more from people whose views we share than from people whose views contradict our own ; disagreement can cause stress and inhibit learning.¡± : My issue: : This opinion seems like reasonable, but I don¡¯t agree with it. : We can certainly believe that disagreement can cause stress. But we are not sure that we can usually learn much more from people whose views we share than from people whose views contradict our own because since we already have the same views as theirs, there is no fresh opinion that we can learn. When we talk with those people who have the similar views with us, we just can strengthen the views which have already existed in our own minds. : On the other hand, when someone disagree with us, they surely offer some different views. Maybe they are reasonable, maybe not. Anyway, we meet something new. We can analyse whether they are rational or not, and then decide how many things we can learn from them. : For example, one day, I discussed a problem about comparison between Chinese education methods and American education methods with one of my friends. At the beginning, I believed that Chinese education methods were better than American education methods. But my friend had an opposite opinion. We could not agree with each other. On one hand, we felt stress. On the other hand, we tried to persuade the other person to accept our own opinion. Both of us explained why our own opinion was reasonable and the other person¡¯s opinion was unreasonable. Finally, when we became calm, we found both of us were wrong. The two kinds of education methods had their own advantages and disadvantages. It was difficult to judge this was surely better than that. We learnt something from the other, and got an overall opinion about this problem although we felt stress and refused to accept other opinion at the beginning. In fact, a lot of new ideas come from discussion between the people who have different views. So we also can gain lots of new views from disagreement. Of course, it needs the persons who take part in discussions keep objectivity and wind mind to accept reasonable parts of different opinions. : Argument Topic: : Requirement: Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. : The following appeared in a memorandum written by the vice president of Nature¡¯s Way, a chain of stores selling health food and other health-related products. : ¡°Previous experience has shown that our stores are most profitable in areas where residents are highly concerned with leading healthy lives. We should therefore build our next new store in Plainsville, which has many such residents. Plainsville merchants report that sales of running shoes and exercise clothing are at all-time highs. The local health club, which nearly closed five years ago due to lack of business, has more members than ever, and the weight training and aerobics classes are always full. We can even anticipate a new generation of customers: Plainsville¡¯s schoolchildren are required to participate in a ¡®fitness for life¡¯ program, which emphasizes the benefits of regular exercise at an early age.¡± : My argument: : In some situations, people will spend a lot of money to get healthy lives. But the vice president of Nature¡¯s Way ignores some other facts: : Firstly, it seems that the vice president draws his conclusion based on the previous experience. But in modern society, people¡¯s interests and habits change more quickly than before. Previous experience doesn¡¯t surely indicate that it also fit to the current situation and the future trend. : Secondly, the residents of Plainsville don¡¯t surely need to buy something from stores. Different people have different understandings about healthy life. They can eat health food, do physical exercises such as jogging, aerobics, etc. or just have more rest. With some methods to lead healthy lives, the residents need to buy something from stores. But in some other situations, people also can get healthy lives even though they don¡¯t spend any money. : Thirdly, it is not a certain thing that the residents of Plainsville will buy a lot of products from the new store. If there are already many stores which are selling almost the same products with those sold by the new store in Plainsville, the new store can not expect that it can gain satisfying profit, although the customers do need buy something for healthy lives. They maybe don¡¯t will to try other new brand products, since they already got used to the current products which are sold by the present stores in Plainsville. : Considering about these facts, I think the vice president of Nature¡¯s Way need to invite some experts to do more market researches, and make a detailed plan to ensure the stable possibility of making money. : My e-mail address is:zzl14664@sina.com : Give you my best blessing! : Yours sincerely : Stella