Please review my essay and provide feedback

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The following letter to the editor appeared in the Coastal Times:

It has become clear that President Leonard needs to be recalled. His approval rating is down below 50% and the unemployment rate is well above its historical average. While I agree with his handling of the recent international conflicts, we simply cannot afford such stagnant economic growth. We must recall President Leonard in order to put our neighbors back to work!

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.


The author opines that the country needs to recall its former president Leonard in order to improve the current stagnant economic growth. The limitations against him are high unemployment rate and low approval rating. The author agrees with Leonard's handling of international conflicts and hence feels that Leonard needs to be called to put the country's neighbors back. The argument contains fallacies which are described below.

Primarily, various reasons behind the approval rating and unemployment rate need to be studied. Even though public may not approve, sometimes leader may indeed give his best performance and still may not get appreciated due to many reasons. A leader may increase fuel rates, vehicle prices or taxes to raise certain income needed for the country but public may not approve of the same policy. Generally in many countries average approval rating may depend on huge set of people which includes uneducated people who believe in free gifts or policies that benefit them(for instance reservation and additional benefits) and educated people who are too busy to evaluate their leader and others. So on average the approval rating may not reflect the correct ability of the leader.

Similarly, Unemployment can result due to various reasons. The reasons may include factors such as lack of skills even though they depend on the President capability to increase industrialization to provide jobs. On the other hand, the same factors can also account for his capability of handling things at needed level.

The writer says that Leonard can handle international conflicts well and he feels that country people cannot afford such stagnant economic growth. The author needs to support his statement with more facts and figures in order to make it look convincing. It also needs to be figured whether president Leonard can repeat the earlier performance even in current times. There are plenty number of cases where the leader which met with success in the past may not manage to do the same in different time periods later. One such instance is of Infosys Narayanamurthy who founded infosys with his partners and raised to a very high level. But he took charge for the second time, situations were different and he could deliver the same performance as before. Therefore author statement needs to be evaluated thoroughly before it can sound convincing.

The above aspects need to be considered to make argument acceptable enough. Without additional information which addresses the assumptions and loopholes behind the argument, the argument as is unacceptable.

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by MartyMurray » Wed Jun 22, 2016 4:19 am
The structure and flow of this essay are pretty good. While I found the concluding paragraph a bit lacking, overall the way the essay progresses is pretty good.

Also some nice ideas are presented, and the Infosys example is interesting.

Having said that, some flaws in key details cause some problems.

The biggest issue is the following. I am not sure that an official GMAT essay prompt would use the wording that this one does, but "recalled' in this context does not mean "bring back". It means basically "removed". In other words, "We have to revote, this time to remove him."

While the wording chosen is a little uncommon, maybe you could have deciphered that Leonard is actually the current president by noticing that his approval rating "is down" and that he has handled "recent international conflicts". Both of those facts point to his being president now, meaning that "recall" must not mean "bring back".

The second paragraph is pretty strong. If the entire essay were as tight as the second paragraph you would be pretty much set.

In paragraph three, the first sentence needs "because of" rather than "due to". In the second sentence, what "they" refers to is rather unclear at best. "they" seems to refer to "reasons" or "factors". That sentence is incoherent, and the next sentence is maybe even more unintelligible. While someone could probably decipher what you are getting at, that paragraph is not a good example of effective writing.

Maybe the first two sentences of the fourth paragraph should have been in the concluding paragraph. They are not really related to the rest of the paragraph.

The rest of the fourth paragraph is pretty good, or would have been had "recall" actually meant "bring back". One key detail does create a real problem though. "could deliver" needs a "not" in order to mean what I believe you actually meant to say.

Another place in which you left out key words is in the first paragraph when you said, "Leonard needs to be called to put the country's neighbor's back". "put back" is rather different from "put back to work", and by the way, the country's neighbor's are neighboring countries, and that's not what the author was talking about when the author said "put our neighbors back to work."

I guess that the last paragraph is ok, if a little short and very formulaic. I mean, I don't recall really any "loopholes" exactly, and basically what you said could have applied to pretty much any argument. Being very general might be ok though.

So I think that in a couple of paragraphs you have shown that you can put together some decent writing. Now you need to be more consistent, making all the paragraphs of an essay as solid as most aspects of those two were. Part of what you need to do in order to accomplish that is to pay much more attention to details. Modifiers have to clearly modify something, necessary words have to be included, the actual meaning of the prompt has to be deciphered, and other details have to be handled well.

I notice that you have done a better job of using articles "a", "an" and "the". Sweet. Now keep tightening up your writing, and make the entire essay as solid as the best parts of this one.
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by conquistador » Wed Jun 22, 2016 7:09 am
thanks for the review.

I literally took the word 'recalled' as bring back. Can you throw some more light on this topic since I could not get a proper reference material for this meaning of the word.

Also I could not get the meaning of the below sentence appropriately.
"We must recall President Leonard in order to put our neighbors back to work! "
Could you please explain it again.

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by DavidG@VeritasPrep » Wed Jun 22, 2016 7:23 am
Mechmeera wrote:thanks for the review.

I literally took the word 'recalled' as bring back. Can you throw some more light on this topic since I could not get a proper reference material for this meaning of the word.

Also I could not get the meaning of the below sentence appropriately.
"We must recall President Leonard in order to put our neighbors back to work! "
Could you please explain it again.
Here's the wikipedia entry on election recalls: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recall_election

But I wouldn't worry too much about this - GMAC wants to limit confusion on the AWA (they're concerned about your ability to structure ideas, not your understanding of abstruse political terminology.) Every possible AWA topic is contained in the Official Guide. If you flip through, you'll see that there isn't much difficult terminology.
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by MartyMurray » Wed Jun 22, 2016 9:36 am
Mechmeera wrote:I could not get the meaning of the below sentence appropriately.
"We must recall President Leonard in order to put our neighbors back to work!"
That sentence basically means that since the president is not handling employment well, in order to increase employment and put our neighbors, meaning anyone in our country who is unemployed, back to work, we have to have a recall election to remove President Leonard.
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by conquistador » Wed Jun 22, 2016 10:19 am
Marty Murray wrote:
Mechmeera wrote:I could not get the meaning of the below sentence appropriately.
"We must recall President Leonard in order to put our neighbors back to work!"
That sentence basically means that since the president is not handling employment well, in order to increase employment and put our neighbors, meaning anyone in our country who is unemployed, back to work, we have to have a recall election to remove President Leonard.
Now I get it completely. It is completely hilarious the way I've written the essay with do many misunderstandings.
I misunderstood recalled, I thought this neighbors means neighboring countries.
How can prevent these kind of scenarios.

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by MartyMurray » Wed Jun 22, 2016 10:09 pm
Mechmeera wrote:Now I get it completely. It is completely hilarious the way I've written the essay with do many misunderstandings.
I misunderstood recalled, I thought this neighbors means neighboring countries.
How can prevent these kind of scenarios.
Maybe you have to slow down a little or somehow be more attentive to what makes sense.

For instance, the prompt talks about unemployment. What makes sense is that the unemployment mentioned is within the country of which Leonard is president, and that the discussion would suddenly jump to putting neighboring countries back to work does not make sense.

Similarly, there are in the prompt various clues that the Leonard is currently president. Even though you had initially gotten the impression that "recalled" means "brought back", if you had paid a little more attention to those clues, maybe you would have questioned your initial interpretation of "recalled".

Maybe that last idea is key. Maybe you have to be ready to change or at least question your interpretation if new information comes in that conflicts with it.

In any case, similarly to how you have to be more attentive to details and making sense in your writing you could be more attentive in your reading and seek to notice key ideas and really understand what is being said.
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