GMAT Essays (AWA)

The following appeared in an article in a college departmental newsletter:
"Professor Taylor of Jones University is promoting a model of foreign language instruction in which students
receive 10 weeks of intensive training, then go abroad to live with families for 10 weeks. The superiority of the
model, Professor Taylor contends, is proved by the results of a study in which foreign language tests given to
students at 25 other colleges show that first-year foreign language students at Jones speak more fluently after
only 10 to 20 weeks in the program than do 9 out of 10 foreign language majors elsewhere at the time of their
graduation."
Discuss how well reasoned ... etc.

The argument above explains the superiority of a model of foreign language teaching by comparing the results of the students studying in 25 schools following that model with students of schools that do not follow it. Moreover , the results are only based on fluency of speaking the language rather than knowledge of the language as a whole and the background of students. The above unwarranted assumptions , primarily , make the argument flawed.

The argument gives an example of how students of Jones University where the model was followed resulted in more fluent speakers of the language in only 10 to 20 weeks than the students of the colleges where the model wasn't followed. The author here assumes that the 25 colleges where he conducted his tests correctly represent students of all other colleges. It could be possible that if he conducted his tests in 50 more colleges , all of those colleges would show better results than Jones University. It also may be possible that the students of the 25 colleges where he conducted the tests belonged to different background than those of Jones University where the students could have had prior experience of speaking the language which may not have been the case with other colleges. Had the author provided an information about how these colleges represent most of the colleges , his claim would have seemed stronger.

The author also only takes fluency in speaking the language as the criterion for claiming which model was more successful. It could be possible that the students of other colleges were better in writing skills than in speaking skills of the language. Also, it could be possible that other colleges focused on writing skills during the earlier stages of the course while the model described above focused on speaking skills at the starting. So, at early 10 weeks , students seemed to be more fluent if they followed the above mentioned model as the other models didn't focus on the speaking aspect in the start. An explanation stating how only fluency was the criterion for the language courses how the courses were structured similarly would have strengthened the authors claim.

The author bases his claim of the model proposed by him being more successful on the results of Jones University when compared with those of 25 other colleges. He fails to warrant the above mentioned assumptions about how the 25 colleges represent the student group and how the fluency in speaking a language can only be the basis to study which student has learnt the language better. He also fails to justify how the courses of other colleges were structured similar to the course in Jones Univerity. Thus, the argument of the author seems seriously flawed.