GMAT Essays (AWA)

AWA ESSAYS: Analyze Argument
ESSAY QUESTION:
The following appeared in a newspaper editorial during the holiday shopping season:
"Americans spend far too much of their time buying and consuming non-essential goods. Studies show that, on average Americans spend over a quarter of their leisure time shopping. As such, it is no secret why America is losing its competitive edge relative to other countries. Instead of spending their time productively, Americans are wasting time through frivolous consumption. In order to counteract this trend, Americans should spend more time focused on personal and communal development--by, for example, pursuing educational advancement or participating in volunteer opportunities."
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. Point out flaws in the argument's logic and analyze the argument's underlying assumptions. In addition, evaluate how supporting evidence is used and what evidence might counter the argument's conclusion. You may also discuss what additional evidence could be used to strengthen the argument or what changes would make the argument more logically sound.

YOUR RESPONSE:
The editor said that Americans spend far much of their time in shopping non essential goods thereby wasting their time doing non productive things and also that because they spend the time in non productive things, America is losing its competitive edge. Therefore he opines that Americans should spend more time focused on personal and communal development things. But the editor concludes based on improper assumptions as described in the following data.

The author feels that Americans spend far too much of their time buying and consuming non essential goods. But it is also true that the activities can include basic needs that include food or things required for daily life which cannot be avoided. Even though eating 3-4 times, purchasing household needs and daily chores seem non essential to author as they don't add productivity for the country, they are common and inevitable.

Also the author says that the shopping in leisure is what leads a country lose its competitive edge. He did not mention any reason that made think so. There can be many other reasons other than non productive shopping activity which decide the competition dege of a country relative to other countries. Ignoring all those reasons the author made a hurried conclusion that America is losing its competitive edge because its citizens shop for a large amount of time.

He also suggested that in order to counteract this trend, Americans should spend their time on personal and communal development. He opines that spending time on personal and communal development activities such as pursuing educational advancement or participating in volunteer opportunities will increase their productivity and thus help America regain its competitive edge over other countries. This statement sound a bit extreme. Even though it cant be denied that activities such as above mentioned help in overall development, there is no rule that they can make the country regain its competitive edge. It is quite possible they can enhance people standard of living but add no advantage to competition level of the country.

Thus instead if making extreme conclusions that shopping is the cause of everything he needs to survey and decide on proper criteria to improve the competition edge of America.

Thanks for the valuable feedback Katherine.

Regarding conclusion I agree with your suggestion. By the time I came to conclusion I ran out of time and could not complete it.

In this case almost every activity took time. I did not understand how to write introduction properly and took a lot of time to come up with reasons to analyze the argument. By the time I reached to the conclusion I had no idea how to suggest better ideas than the author for the necessary improvement. Also I could not get all the criteria that define competitive edge of a country.