Please rate my first AWA
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25 Mar 2013, 13:11
Hi, this is my first post in this forum. I've found some information here to be really helpful for preparing my gmat.
Right know i'm scoring between 650-670 in the practice CATs, but I would need some further help regarding AWA.
For practice, I've written the following essays and I would really appreciate the feedback you could give me. Please take into account that I am not a native speaker.
Thanks!
FIRST
The following appeared in a report presented for discussion at a meeting of the directors of a company that manufactures parts for heavy machinery. “The falling revenues that the company is experiencing coincide with delays in manufacturing. These delays, in turn, are due in large part to poor planning in purchasing metals. Consider further that the manager of the department that handles purchasing of raw materials has an excellent background in general business, psychology, and sociology, but knows little about the properties of metals. The company should, therefore, move the purchasing manager to the sales department and bring in a scientist from the research division to be manager of the purchasing department.”
Discuss how well reasoned . . . Etc.
My answer:
The report's conclussion that relocating the purchase manager would solve the fall in revenues is seriously flawed. The reasoning does not follow a correct cause-effect relation and relies on several assumptions with no evidence to support them.
Firstly, the text states that the falling revenues "coincide" with the delays in manufacturing, but this does not necessarily means that the delays are the main cause for the decreasing revenues. Moreover, discussing about falling revenues may not be important. To make a correct conclussion, the company's profits and costs should also be taken into consideration.
Secondly, assuming that the connection considered in the first paragraph is correct, the solution that the reports present, which proposes replacing the manager of the department with a scientist, is not correctly justified. In one hand, why would some with knowledge in metals solve the delay? It would be more important logistic's than material's knowledge. In the other hand, changing the head of this department does not guarantees that the delays would be solved, what if the cause for the delays are incorrect orders coming from manufacture?. Moreover, replacing a person with bussines and psichology knowledge with a scientist for running a department could result in bigger delays or different problems. Running a department requires business and psychology knowledge to handle people and groups.
To conclude, we can reaffirm that the argument presented in the report is not correctly supported. Further analysis of the company's balance sheet could be useful to determine the causes for the fall in revenue. Also, studying the changes in the company and in the market that have ocurred since the start of the revenue's fall would give further evidence to establish it cause.
SECOND
The following appeared in an announcement issued by the publisher of The Mercury, a weekly newspaper. “Since a competing lower-priced newspaper, The Bugle, was started five years ago, The Mercury’s circulation has declined by 10,000 readers. The best way to get more people to read The Mercury is to reduce its price below that of The Bugle, at least until circulation increases to former levels. The increased circulation of The Mercury will attract more businesses to buy advertising space in the paper.”
Discuss how well reasoned… etc.
My answer:
The announcement presented by the publisher reaches to the conclusion that reducing the newspaper's price, below the new competitor's one, will help to regain the former circulation levels. This argument, is seriously flawed and does not present a correct line of reasoning.
Firstly, the author assumes that the set-up of the competitor, The Bugle, is the cause of the fall in The Mercury's circulation, but does not present any evidence to support this statement. Maybe, this two facts are simply two unrelated events that happened at the same moment in time. The lower circulation could mean that people are just not buying any more newspaper. In order to check the correlation assumed by the publisher, it should be studied wether the readers that The Mercury has lost are now buying The Bugle or not.
Secondly, the argument supports the idea that reducing the prices, even below the competitor's one, would help to improve sales. This proposal has two different problems: on the one hand, if people are not buying newspapers, disregarding the price they have, the idea of cutting prices would only hurt the company's profit; on the other hand, price is not the only factor that a customer takes into consideration when buying a newspaper, the lost of clients may be caused by poorly written or not interesting articles.
Thirdly, supposing the circulation is increased by the presented idea, the announcement claims that the increase in circulation will atract more advertisement' buyers. This assumption does not make sense. Circulation is only one of the many factors that an advertiser would consider. Furthermore, advertisers could be investing less and less money in newspaper's advertising, and going into some more modern means, like TV or Internet.
To finish, we can reaffirm that the conclusion that the publisher reaches is not correctly supported by any evidence. Before making any changes in the newspaper prices, some more field studies should be made, to understand the underlying reasons for the lost of customers.