GMAT Essays (AWA)

A leading newspaper is recommending that the price of its newspaper must be lowered to level of competitive newspaper, Bugle. The recommendation follows a decline of 10,000 copies since the emergence of Bugle. Author believes that price reduction would cause more circulation of Mercury would lead to more business to buy advertising space in the business. At first glance the argument looks promising but if one looks at the situation more closely, one can easily find few fundamental flaws with the way argument is presented.

While it is clear that Mercury's circulation has reduced by 10000 since the emergence of Bugle but there are no supporting evidence for this claim. 2 Events happening one after other does not necessarily imply that former event caused the latter therefore these two events are casually related owing to absence of promising facts. Moreover, there could have been many other reasons such as content of the newspaper, which could have determinal effect on the circulation numbers.

Furthermore, the claim that only way to increase circulation is to reduce price below that of the Bugle circulation seems to be lacking evidence. Author again does nor provide any conclusive evidence to support the claims, nor does he suggest on what basis he made that claim. Did he take into account the people's verdict or this was result of any opinion poll? There could be various other ways to increase the circulation levels such as improvement of quality content, more articles to attract audience, increase the varities so that more people switch to Mercury.

Lastly, author's claim that increased circulation would attract more adverstising space seems to lack evidence. Furthermore, the question whether the losses occured due to reduction in prices would be offsetted by increased revenues from advertsing is still to be answered.

In conclusion,author fails to provide supporting evidences to justify the claims made in the argument. In addition it casually relates prices and increase circulation numbers. Had author provided some logical facts and justified assummptions the argument would have been well defined. Threfore the argument is weak and require further support to strengthen it.

Thanks for sharing your essay. It's a brave thing to do, and hopefully some specific comments on your essay, along with overall AWA tips, will help you and others.

Always bear in mind, your job is to find faults in the initial argument. There is no need for quotes such as, "At first glance the argument looks promising." You do not want your readers thinking even for a moment that you are pleased with the logic of the prompt. This may seem like a minor point, but it is something to keep in mind throughout the essay.

You do a nice job in terms of organization - one major flaw per body paragraph is the gold standard. However, if something warrants its own paragraph, it really should be substantial enough to sustain a paragraph. Your fourth paragraph, or third body paragraph, has this problem. It feels more like an "add-in" than a major piece of your argument. Either fold this idea into a larger paragraph, or expand it out. You mention that there is "a question" still to be answered; well, tell us some plausible outcomes of that question. If you can convincingly raise two opposing outcomes, then you have certainly accomplished goal #1, which is revealing the argument as not logically sound.

In terms of essay organization, always try to tie it back to your thesis. At the end of the second paragraph, it might have been helpful to write something like, "Additional information or studies about this topic might aid the argument, but as of now, the argument is merely speculative." This shows that everything you write is in service of your All Important Thesis Statement.

Great work on transition words. They really help the reader understand where you are going as you type. This is a minor point, but certainly try to vary up the transitions. I saw "furthermore" twice; it comes off as a bit robotic, as if someone told you to include transition words, as opposed to them organically entering your essay to strengthen it.

Good work, and keep practicing! I imagine your third body paragraph was curtailed due to timing. If so, see if you can improve your typing speed and deftness with keyboard shortcuts before the day of the test. Every minute counts!

Hope this helps.