Feedback/evaluation/rating of my AWA
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05 Oct 2013, 09:05
Hello good sirs/mesdames,
I would appreciate any feedback, evaluation or rating of my AWA below. This is from the Kaplan free sample GMAT test.
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The following appeared in the opinion section of a national newsmagazine:
“To reverse the deterioration of the postal service, the government should raise the price of postage stamps. This solution will no doubt prove effective, since the price increase will generate larger revenues and will also reduce the volume of mail, thereby eliminating the strain on the existing system and contributing to improved morale.”
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.
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The author proposes that the government respond to the deterioration of the postal service by raising the price of postage stamps. The author reasons that this course of action will be effective in improving the postal service system and in boosting staff morale by generating larger revenues while simultaneously reducing the volume of mail. I am not convinced that this well reasoned argument, and I would like to explain my position by pointing out two main flaws in the author's conjecture.
First of all, the author fails to substantiate his claim that raising the price of postage stamps would lead to an increase in overall revenues. If it is true, as the author claims, that raising the price of postage stamps would reduce the volume of mail processed by the postal service, then it is imperative that the revenues generated from the increased price of the postage stamps would compensate for the reduced volume of mail. However, we have no reason to believe that this is the case because the author gives no information surrounding this issue.
Second, I do not find any reason to believe that larger revenues would reverse the deterioration of the postal service because the scope of this problem is not defined in the first place. In order to adequately support the conjecture that larger revenues would reverse the deterioration of the postal service, the author should first defined what exactly "deterioration" means in this context, and elaborate specifically how this deterioration can be solved by generating larger revenues.
To summarize, the author needs to do two things in order to support his argument. First, he needs to prove that the increased price of the postage stamps would compensate for the reduced volume of mail. Second, he needs to define exactly what the problem is with the postal service, and then explain exactly how increased revenues would solve this problem.