Please grade my essay :) GRE: Issue and Argument essay

Hey guys! I'm a student form germany and I want to achieve my master gegree in america, next fall. Therefore, I have to write the GRE in january. Since I still live in germany, there are not many potential graders around here, so it would be awesome if you guys could give me some tipps for my essays and give me an orientation, where I stand right now. Here my 2 essays:

1. Issue essay

The best way to teach is to praise positive actions and ignore negative ones.

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.


In the past century our educational systems were known for authoritative teachers and hard punishment for insufficient performance through upbraiding or physical pain. The society was separated in a small part of educated leaders and a tremendous part of uneducated workers, who weren't able to achieve high in the system. In modern society the most schools hound a different approach of teaching and try to motivate the students through positive reactions, which has changed the society and opened high education for a lot more individuals than in the centuries before. Therefore, teachers should praise successful attempts of their students and ignore their failure.

First, punishing for negative actions does not necessarily lead to a better performance of the student. To illustrate this we can imagine a young girl, who just was upbraided by the teacher for a wrong answer. It is unlikely that this reaction of the teacher will lead to a better performance of the girl in the future. The opposite will appear: The girl, who wanted to be rewarded for participating in class, will be afraid of raising her voice again and probably remains silent, which actually leads to an even worse performance. She might connect school with this negative impression and her overall result will decrease, which is against all the existence reasons school is there for. We can observe this phenomenon in history: During the 18th century it was common to punish students in class, which led to fear of authority and reluctance against the school system. A lot of students started to hate the educational system and decided to get out of it as soon as possible, which consequeces were low rates of highly educated working force and huge numbers of common labor workers.

In addition, praising the positive actions of students helps them to connect work with rewarding - an absolutely relevant experience for their future lives and jobs. A student, who's praised in class for something and is graded well for his struggles feels good and connects this feeling to the work he had to perform for achieving this reward. He develops a deeper interest in the topic itself and increases his knowledge. However, being good and successful in something is fun and helps you to stay motivated, so that the learning itself becomes clearly easier because you start to realize, that you could do something similar for a living. The student starts to identify himself with the topics he has learned in school and this might support him significantly in the path finding to his future.

I don't want to say that a teacher should tolerate screaming or fighting in class. At this point, when certain individuals disturb and worsen the learning effect for other students, the teacher has to interfere and make sure that such a behavior is not tolerated and leads to certain consequences, which are not in the interest of the individual, as they have to expect it in real life, too.

Praising students in class is an important tool for teachers to lead to success and motivation. It helps the individuals to understand that hard work is rewarded, while punishing wrong answers leads to fear or closure against authority and worsens the student's chance to get a good start in life. Therefore the best way to teach successfully is to praise positive behavior and to tolerate certain kinds of negative performance.

2. Argument essay:

The following appeared in a letter from the owner of the Sunnyside Towers apartment building to its manager.

"One month ago, all the showerheads on the first five floors of Sunnyside Towers were modified to restrict the water flow to approximately one-third of its original flow. Although actual readings of water usage before and after the adjustment are not yet available, the change will obviously result in a considerable savings for Sunnyside Corporation, since the corporation must pay for water each month. Except for a few complaints about low water pressure, no problems with showers have been reported since the adjustment. Clearly, restricting water flow throughout all the twenty floors of Sunnyside Towers will increase our profits further."

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.



The author connects the limitation of water usage in his hotel with lower expenses for water and therefore higher profits overall. However, the argument is flawed and doesn't justify its claim with the information given.

First, one assumption of the author is that the lower amount of water used will not affect the visitor numbers of the hotel. To support that he states, that there were just a few complaints about low water pressure during the month. On the contrary it is unclear, whether all the people, who were unsatisfied with the low water pressure, actually made a complaint. For instance there might be a significant number of them, who recognized the low water pressure and because of that, decided to choose another hotel the next time, when they will be in town. If this would be the case the adjustment could have a negative impact on the profits so that the hotel would loose money. To state that the few complains do not represent a higher number of customers we would need long term figures to decide, which effect the water limitation has on the visitor count.

Another assumption is that the lower costs for water usage will have a remarkable effect on the overall bill. Instead, it could be possible, that the main causes of expense come from completely different areas like heaters or taxes. The limitation of water usage would have no significant effect and might even fall below the costs of the installment of the new showerheads. This might be the case for instance, when there are just 3-4 people in a week, who are actually taking a shower. To support the authors reasoning we need more information about water usage and the overall costs of the Sunnyside Towers hotel.

Finally, the author claims, that a raft amount of water is used in the showers. But there is absolutely no information provided to reinforce this assumption. To illustrate this we could think of a hotel, which has showers and bathtubs. Since the customers do not have to pay for high water costs for a relaxing bath, a lot of them might decide to take the luxury variation. In this case the showerheads wouldn't have a huge effect, either. In order to make sure that the project was successful we need more information about the hotels facilities and the visitor habits, to identify, whether the new showerheads make sense or not.

In conclusion, the claim of higher profits is leaking in various ways and can easily be undermined. To make sure that the argument of the author is valid we need many more information about a lot of different aspects, concerning the Sunnyside Towers hotel.



Thank you in advance!
Best wishes,
Oli