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The GMAT contains two essays, the Issue essay and the Argument
essay. Between the two, most people find the Issue essay
easier because it’s more familiar. Nearly everyone
has at some point written an essay arguing their point of
view on a particular topic. The Argument essay, however,
is unusual. Most people haven’t written an essay analyzing
the logic of an argument before. The good news is that once
you understand the Argument essay and how it works, you
will probably find it easier to write than the Issue essay.
This article will focus on the preliminary tasks of preparing
to write the Argument essay. Next week we’ll look
at the actual writing. Onward!
Understanding the Task
The first thing we need to be clear about is what the actual
task is. One of the most common mistakes people make on
the Argument essay is that they write another version of
the Issue essay. That is, they give their opinion about
the conclusion of the argument, and then give reasons why
they agree or disagree. If you do that, you’re missing
the point of the Argument essay and treating it like an
Issue essay. The Issue essay is all about you: your opinion,
your examples, your perspective, your point of view. The
Argument essay is not about you. It doesn’t matter
whether you agree or disagree with the author’s conclusion.
The purpose of the Argument essay is to analyze and critique
the logic of the argument. What you think about the conclusion
is irrelevant. Whether the conclusion is true or false is
irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the validity
of the reasoning used to get from the argument’s premises
to its conclusion.
Determining your Point of View
This is easy. Your point of view is that the argument stinks.
It’s terrible. On the Issue essay there’s no
right answer. You can agree with the prompt, disagree with
the prompt, or pick something in between, whatever you like.
But to the question, “How well-reasoned do you find
this argument?” there is a correct answer: “Not
very well. This is a bad argument.” To properly understand
what you’re doing on this essay, you need to understand
that the GMAT is going to present a flawed argument to you,
and it’s your job to criticize the argument and point
out its weaknesses.
Finding Flaws
To find the flaws in the argument you need to recall some
of the basics of Critical Reasoning questions. An argument
is constructed by taking a premise and then drawing a conclusion
on the basis of that premise. On the GMAT we always accept
the truth of the premise, so the flaws we’re interested
in arise from the gap in logic between the premise and the
conclusion. The thing that fills that gap is called an assumption.
Assumptions are like premises in that they also support
the conclusion. But they are different in one all-important
way — they are unstated. The premises are the evidence
for the conclusion that the author has explicitly stated.
The assumptions are what the author has not explicitly stated,
but that nevertheless must be true for the argument to work.
The assumptions are the vulnerable part of any argument
because if they aren’t true, the argument falls apart.
The assumptions are necessary for the argument to survive.
Thus spotting assumptions is the key to criticizing the
argument in your essay. The assumptions you find are going
to be the heart of your essay’s body paragraphs. How
many do you need to find? Ultimately, you want three good
assumptions to write about, three big flaws in the argument.
Most GMAT Argument essay prompts contain many more than
three assumptions, so it shouldn’t be too difficult
to find a handful of good ones. (For tips on spotting assumptions,
see the article “3 Tools for Spotting Assumptions.”)
Exploiting the Flaws
Now that you’ve found some assumptions, there’s
one more thing you need to do before beginning to write.
One of the keys to effective essay-writing is using specific,
concrete examples. In order to effectively criticize assumptions,
you need to have some specific counter-examples. In other
words, if we’re criticizing the author for simply
assuming that something is true, when it might not be, then
we have to have plausible suggestions about what might really
be true. Here’s a quick example.
Hiker Monthly magazine is a successful magazine that
features photographs of beautiful hiking trails in the
mountains. Clearly, anyone wishing to succeed with a new
hiking magazine should make sure to have similar pictures.
Let’s look at one particular assumption here. The
argument is assuming that these photographs are the reason
that Hiker Monthly magazine is successful. But no actual
evidence is given that that’s true. So we could begin
a body paragraph by saying, “The author assumes that
the photographs of hiking trails are the reason that Hiker
Monthly is successful. But there is no actual evidence given
to establish this causal connection. There could easily
be many other reasons why the magazine is successful.”
That’s a good start, but you can’t stop there.
To make the criticism fully persuasive you need concrete
suggestions of what those other reasons might be.
So why else might the magazine be successful? Maybe it
has good articles. Maybe it has interesting columnists.
Maybe people like the classified ads. Maybe it contains
other kinds of photography that people like. Maybe it has
good reviews of hiking equipment. We don’t know whether
any of these things are true, but they’re quite plausible
and the author has said nothing to rule them out. The author
hasn’t even addressed them. Those are the kinds of
specific examples that make your criticism persuasive. It’s
not the reader’s job to supply those examples…it’s
your job. |
