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About ISSUE~ pick a side or see both sides???? HELP~~

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About ISSUE~ pick a side or see both sides???? HELP~~

by rx_11 » Mon May 17, 2010 12:51 am
5. "All groups and organizations should function as teams in which everyone makes decisions and shares responsibilities and duties. Giving one person central authority and responsibility for a project or task is not an effective way to get work done."


My teacher told me when analyse an issue, u must pick a side that will "win out" in the conclusion/introduction. However, i found this issue hard to "pick a side".. I feel both sides are OK and i really don't want to pick a side...(Because only analysing one side is really difficult to write 400+ words, and I really really think that both sides have its advantages and disadvantages, whether to choose depends on certain circumstance)...

So, can I take the notion that "each of the alternatives are viable in certain circumstance"? And i found it easier for me to write in this way. I analyse both advantages and disadvantages about the two alternatives.... can I????
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by grockit_andrea » Mon May 17, 2010 6:34 am
Be very careful if you decide to "see both sides." I haven't professionally scored GMAT essays, but I've been a professional scorer for many other tests, and the scoring rubric is always the same on one point: if a student picks one side, in order to get a good score he need to provide a strong argument for that side. But if a student decides to "fence-sit," he has to provide a strong argument for BOTH sides in order to get the same score. By that, I mean that the (approximately) 5 paragraph length we looked for in an essay that had a single viewpoint was almost doubled in a fence-sitter essay. If you took your 5 paragraphs and split them between two viewpoints, we didn't see that as a 5; we saw it as 2 short essays cobbled together, and that would earn probably a 2 or a 3, depending on how it was done. If the GMAT rubric is similar (and I suspect it probably is) then no matter how well you see both sides, your reader has no choice but to hold you to a higher standard, one that might be difficult to meet with the time constraints of the test.
If you have trouble getting a long enough essay out of supporting a single side, try devoting a paragraph to mentioning what an opposing argument would be, and then disproving it. Then you get to use the alternate viewpoint but still stick to one perspective.
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by rx_11 » Tue May 18, 2010 2:07 am
Thanks so much~~~~~~~:)[/spoiler]
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