GRE作文6分教学博客

小右LuisaUID: 3535387

顶

tesolchinaUID: 2191404

argument 87

In a study of the reading habits of Waymarsh citizens conducted by the University of Waymarsh, most respondents said that they preferred literary classics as reading material. However, a second study conducted by the same researchers found that the type of book most frequently checked out of each of the public libraries in Waymarsh was the mystery novel. Therefore, it can be concluded that the respondents in the first study had misrepresented their reading habits.

Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.


The author of the argument concludes that the respondents in the first study must have lied about their reading habits as the public library records suggested that mystery novels were more frequently borrowed.  We need more information about the library records, the Waymarsh citizens’ reading habits and the design of the first survey in order to evaluate the soundness of the argument.  

试分析第一段的两句话分别做了什么。
其中第二句话如何与后面的中间段呼应？


To begin with, we need to know more about the records and other aspects of public libraries to see if the reasoning is acceptable.  For example, we want to know if the public libraries feature a large collection of literary classics available for the Waymarsh people.  If this genre is simply not available, it would be no surprise that library patrons would turn to mystery novels.  Meanwhile, focusing on the frequency of the books being checked out is not sufficient.  And maybe the patrons would prefer to keep the literary classics for a longer period of time, thereby reducing the frequency of the books being loaned.  We also need to see if patrons have chosen to read literary classics in the reading rooms in the libraries instead of checking the books out.  

这个中间段可分为几个点，请分别列出。
这几个点之间是如何过渡的？


In addition, it is also important to look into the reading habits of the people in Waymarsh.  Public libraries are by no means the only source of literary classics.  Waymarsh people could buy many of the books from the local bookstores or order them online via Amazon or Border.  In fact, since a great many of literary classics have become part of the public domain without the restriction of copyright, Waymarsh people can even download e-copies of the books from the Internet for free.  So a more comprehensive study of whether Waymarsh people access the literary classics through the above-mentioned sources is necessary to get the information we need to evaluate the argument.  

这一段的论述结构和上一段有什么不同？



Finally, we need to scrutinise the first study more critically.  For example, how were the respondents sampled for the study and how representative were the respondents relative to the population at Waymarsh? If the study were conducted at high schools or university, which was quite convenient for such study, the respondents would be predominantly young people and the older people at Waymarsh would have been underrepresented in the study.  Moreover, was the survey questionnaire carefully designed to include all genres including mystery novel?  If the respondents were not given the option mystery novel, it would be unfair to claim that they had misrepresented themselves.  After all the respondents could only provide the information requested by the questionnaire.  

这一段的论述结构和上面那一段更接近？


In conclusion, to see if the respondents have misrepresented their reading habits, we need more evidence about the public libraries, the reading habits of the Waymarsh residents and the design of the first study.  

试根据本文总结出Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.这类题型的写作讨论。

maoerdwnUID: 3551290

tesolchina 发表于 2014-10-12 20:33
以我这次考的issue 89 为例
Claim: Many problems of modern society cannot be solved by laws and t ...

老师，我觉得您的第四段有点脱离主旨，您的主旨是将否定claim 与肯定reason，即“法律不可以改变人们的想法，但法律可以解决社会问题。”按您的思路，应该不存在单独讨论claim或reason的分论点。然而第四段中，举例是法律是通过赋予政府权力来解决社会问题，然而这与法律没有改变人们的想法无关。我想到一个政府立法的例子，可能不是很合适：美国立法废奴，黑人得到了自由和法律、社会地位上的平等，然而美国白人心中对黑人的歧视并未因此改变。渐渐不歧视黑人是通过了长期的社会演变和后期黑人运动达到的，并不是通过那一次立法。

tesolchinaUID: 2191404

maoerdwn 发表于 2014-11-1 21:36
老师，我觉得您的第四段有点脱离主旨，您的主旨是将否定claim 与肯定reason，即“法律不可以改变人们的想 ...

我印象中在这一段的正文里有回应reason里提到的改变想法的问题
政府通过立法赋予学校更多的资源 即便无法改变老师、学生对教育或学习的态度
资源的增加仍然会改善教育质量 解决问题
我现在已经不可能回忆出全文了 但是肯定有回应reason

maoerdwnUID: 3551290

tesolchina 发表于 2014-11-2 00:35
我印象中在这一段的正文里有回应reason里提到的改变想法的问题
政府通过立法赋予学校更多的资源 即便无 ...

哦~这样就可以理解啦。
老师，我还有一些关于issue主旨的困惑。因为之前的思路大部分是“部分反对”或“部分赞同”，如果是部分反对，就先写一段I concede that...说明题目存在一些合理性。后两段写反对的部分。部分赞同就反过来安排段落。我和很多同学交流感觉这好像是大多数人的思路。最近看了老师很多帖子，觉得您讲的分类讨论法很好，1+3模型我也很乐于尝试，学习并掌握。但是从之前的思路到现在的思路感到有些脱节。老师的意思是全文的核心论点在首段阐明，而且这个论点大多是分类讨论的整合，然后后文开始对每种情况对应展开论述。我对这套模型有一些疑惑：这样写与我之前那种同意或不同意的观点怎样整合？我自己想的是，部分反对和支持的话就是说题设是视情况而定的。如果完全反对或完全赞同就分几个同取向的类。我觉得部分反对和支持的话这样写没问题，可是完全反对或完全赞同，这样就相当于列举几个有限的分类，来说明其他未涉及的分类也满足同样的题设。这样是不是不太严谨？  
我自己动手操作1+3模型的能力肯定还非常不成熟，但我想先想清楚我的主旨该怎样确定，具体操作的时候才能有明确的方向。感谢老师的解答！

maoerdwnUID: 3551290

tesolchina 发表于 2014-11-2 00:35
我印象中在这一段的正文里有回应reason里提到的改变想法的问题
政府通过立法赋予学校更多的资源 即便无 ...

抱歉老师，之前没有看全您的讲解，我刚刚看了您的55楼讲解，已经明白了很多我刚刚提出的问题。

tesolchinaUID: 2191404

在点评版友的提纲过程中发现经常有例子不切题的情况，这种情况会导致整篇文章的偏题，是需要避免的。为什么会例子不切题，或许是因为很多同学迷信一些参考书里提供的工具箱，总是希望用一些具体的名人故事或历史事件作为例子，但是很多时候这些例子并不能用来支持十分具体的分论点。因此，我建议大家尝试用一些生活中的例子，包括通过思想实验来编造例子。

先看一个十分经典的思想实验。

YOU LIVE IN A STATE where the most severe criminal punishment is life imprisonment. Someone proposes that since armed robbery is a very seri- ous crime, armed robbers should get a life sentence. A constitutional law- yer asks whether that is consistent with the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. A legal philosopher asks whether it is just.
An economist points out that if the punishments for armed robbery and for armed robbery plus murder are the same, the additional punishment for the murder is zero—and asks whether you really want to make it in the interest of robbers to murder their victims.

如果你想看整本书，在这里下载- https://www.evernote.com/shard/s ... f0ab1972284f676f522

注意在这段十分有效的例证里，并没有任何具体的人名、地名、时间，但是却很有说服力。这说明我们举例子未必要讲具体的人、时间、地点，可以带着读者进行某种思想实验。

比如issue 70
Claim: Universities should require every student to take a variety of courses outside the student's major field of study.
Reason: Acquiring knowledge of various academic disciplines is the best way to become truly educated.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim and the reason on which that claim is based.

有些版友用名人做例子，可是却无法讲出名人选各种课程的故事细节，这样名人的故事就会离题。实际上，我们可以做思想实验
Students majoring in economics, for example, would benefit from taking courses in statistics as ...
In addition, some courses in computer science can also help them ...

这里没有提到具体的人、事件，但却总结出了一类人的规律。
希望更多的同学能尝试思想实验，摆脱举例必须是名人、历史事件的桎梏，写出更加切题的例证。

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微信群里有同学提出可否编一些例子，比如讲中国历史上的某人某事，老美考官也不懂，也没时间细看。我觉得这种做法不太妥当。因为举例子的本意是为了通过我们和读者在知识和阅历上的共通之处来拉近我们之间的距离，让读者接受我们的观点。而讨论一些读者不熟悉的例子就违背了这个原理，更遑论带有欺骗性质的编造例子。相反，本楼所倡导的通过思想实验提出假设性的例子，虽然并非确有其事，但却基于常识或某些普世的原理，反而较容易为读者所接受。因此，这个策略值得大家尝试。我的范文中也有普遍使用这个方法，有兴趣的同学可以回复本楼举例讨论，我会在这里更新。（15年5月22日清晨）

tesolchinaUID: 2191404

maoerdwn 发表于 2014-11-2 22:13
抱歉老师，之前没有看全您的讲解，我刚刚看了您的55楼讲解，已经明白了很多我刚刚提出的问题。

好吧 有什么问题欢迎回帖提出
我这个帖子里有很多好东西 等以后大家就会慢慢发现了 O(∩_∩)O~

tesolchinaUID: 2191404

GRE作文评卷是人改和机改相结合的，据说ETS开发的e-rater和人改的结果吻合率高达90%以上。关于e-rater的具体运作，有ETS发表过几篇论文
等我有时间及版友对我的博客表现出足够的兴趣时我会详细讨论一下erater的运作原理以及我们可以如何应对。

Attali & Burstein (2006)对e-rater做了比较详细的介绍，指出评分时会考虑考生作文几方面的特征：

Grammar, Usage, Mechanics, and Style Measures

The writing analysis tools identify five main types of grammar, usage, and mechanics errors – agreement errors, verb formation errors, wrong word use, missing punctuation, and typographical errors. The approach to detecting violations of general English grammar is corpus based and statistical, and can be explained as follows. The system is trained on a large corpus of edited text, from which it extracts and counts sequences of adjacent word and part-of-speech pairs called bigrams. The system then searches student essays for bigrams that occur much less often than would be expected based on the corpus frequencies (Chodorow & Leacock, 2000).

其中包括五种主要的语法、用法和风格上的错误
- 主谓一致错误
- 动词形式错误
- 错误的用词
- 标点符号缺失
- 拼写错误

The writing analysis tools also highlight aspects of style that the writer may wish to revise, such as the use of passive sentences, as well as very long or very short sentences within the essay. Another feature of undesirable style that the system detects is the presence of overly repeti- tious words, a property of the essay that might affect its rating of overall quality (Burstein & Wolska, 2003).

其中在辨别用词错误时，e-rater用的是语料库方法，查看文章中相邻两个词在语料库中出现的频率。因此，我在61楼介绍的语料库对修改用词方面的错误会很有帮助。而风格方面，e-rater会找出太长或太短的句子、被动语态以及反复使用的词语。这就要求我们在写作时不能写太长或太短的句子、多用主动语态以及在用词上要有变化，比如用同义词或者其他的指代词。

Organization and Development

Finally, the writing analysis tools provide feedback about discourse elements present or absent in the essay (Burstein, Marcu, and Knight, 2003). The discourse analysis approach is based on a linear representation of the text. It assumes the essay can be segmented into sequences of discourse elements, which include introductory material (to provide the context or set the stage), a thesis statement (to state the writer’s position in rela- tion to the prompt), main ideas (to assert the author’s main message), supporting ideas (to provide evidence and support the claims in the main ideas, thesis, or conclusion), and a conclusion (to summarize the essay’s entire argument). In order to identify the various discourse elements, the system was trained on a large corpus of human annotated essays (Burstein, Marcu, and Knight, 2003). Figure 1 (next page) presents an example of an annotated essay.

e-rater采用一种话语分析的进路，假设文章可以分作一些话语元素的序列。然后根据已经做好标注的文章作为数据，系统通过机器学习，学会辨认哪些句子属于主旨句、主题句、支持句、结论句以及无关的句子。具体的算法还要再看其他的文献进一步研究。

The overall organization score (referred to in what follows as organiza- tion) was designed for these genres of writing. It assumes a writing strategy that includes an introductory paragraph, at least a three-paragraph body with each paragraph in the body consisting of a pair of main point and supporting idea elements, and a concluding paragraph. The organization score measures the difference between this minimum five-paragraph essay and the actual discourse elements found in the essay. Missing elements could include supporting ideas for up to the three expected main points or a missing introduction, conclusion, or main point. On the other hand, identification of main points beyond the minimum three would not contribute to the score. This score is only one possible use of the identified discourse elements, but was adopted for this study.

这里说明我们至少要写5段，包括开头、结尾和三个中间段。基本上和我提出的1+3模型是吻合的。 当然，我的模型对coherence有更高的要求（见本帖54楼）。

The second feature derived from Criterion’s organization and devel- opment module measures the amount of development in the discourse elements of the essay and is based on their average length (referred to as development).

这个有点坑，好像是看中间段的长度来打分。但是仅仅字数多是不够的，因为与主题无关的句子会被标为irrelevant。

Lexical Complexity (2 features)

Two features in e-rater V.2 are related specifically to word-based characteristics. The first is a measure of vocabulary level (referred to as vocabulary) based on Breland, Jones, and Jenkins’ (1994) Standardized Frequency Index across the words of the essay. The second feature is based on the average word length in characters across the words in the essay (referred to as word length).

这里主要是看词汇的深度和长度。也就是说用的词比较少见以及单词比较长就好些。
http://www.usingenglish.com/resources/text-statistics.php
这个在线工具可以分析你的文章的难词比例

Prompt-Specific Vocabulary Usage (2 features)
E-rater evaluates the lexical content of an essay by comparing the words it contains to the words found in a sample of essays from each score category (usually six categories). It is expected that good essays will resemble each other in their word choice, as will poor essays. To do this, content vector analysis (Salton, Wong, & Yang, 1975) is used, where the vocabulary of each score category is converted to a vector whose elements are based on the frequency of each word in the sample of essays.

这两个特点是基于每道不同的题目的不同的范文库，然后将学生的作文转换成矢量，和范文的矢量进行对比，长得像几分，就是几分。这个听起来有点匪夷所思，难道6分的文章用的词都差不多么？考虑到现在的GRE作文要求已经很具体，我想至少argument的词还是很接近的。比如一道关于assumption的题目，你肯定要用相关的词吧。至于issue，估计很难预计6分的文章会用什么词，但至少要尽量做到切题，这样就能比较接近。


总的来说，e-rater对文章的结构有非常明确地要求，中间三段要支持主旨句，而主题句也要有足够的细节支持；同时在用词上要尽可能地道，就是在语料库中可以查到的搭配。另外，要根据题目的要求来写作，这样写出来的文章用的词才会和范文接近。
当然，e-rater也不是完全可靠的，我们也没有必要为了迎合它而做出什么很夸张的事情，因为GRE作文还是会有human rater来看的。


Further Reading

Attali, Y., & Burstein, J. (2006). Automated essay scoring with e-rater® V. 2. The Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment, 4(3). Retrieved from http://napoleon.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/jtla/article/view/1650
Burstein, J. (2003). The E-rater® scoring engine: Automated essay scoring with natural language processing. Retrieved from http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2003-02475-007
Lee, Y.-W., Gentile, C., & Kantor, R. (2008). Analytic scoring of TOEFL CBT essays: Scores from humans and e-rater. ETS TOEFL Research Reports, 81. Retrieved from http://144.81.87.152/Media/Research/pdf/RR-08-01.pdf
Monaghan, W., & Bridgeman, B. (2005). E-rater as a Quality Control on Human Scores. Retrieved from http://www.researchgate.net/publ ... 49528baf70d5947.pdf
Powers, D. E., Burstein, J. C., Chodorow, M., Fowles, M. E., & Kukich, K. (2002). Stumping< i> e-rater</i>: challenging the validity of automated essay scoring. Computers in Human Behavior, 18(2), 103–134.

ikowUID: 3497152

tesolchina 发表于 2014-10-26 13:11
插图版PDF

Use Corpus to revise your writing

感谢老师分享~~
这个大二的时候上学术论文写作的时候老师就一直让我们用来着，可是自己当任务给糊弄过去了，所以现在写作文语言渣渣的不行

ikowUID: 3497152

tesolchina 发表于 2014-11-3 22:58
GRE作文评卷是人改和机改相结合的，据说ETS开发的e-rater和人改的结果吻合率高达90%以上。关于e-rater的具体 ...

据说e-rater会根据字数限定分数，如果不超过500字，最多就是4分了
最后人评定的分数和e-rater误差在0.5分以内
期待老师的分析文章~~

isabellaxiaUID: 3397230

tesolchina 发表于 2014-10-31 11:00
argument 87

In a study of the reading habits of Waymarsh citizens conducted by the University  ...

从另一个帖子跳过来的，发现进了一个GRE AW大牛的坑 ：）

Regarding this argument, I am thinking maybe it's better to have the term "evidence" more since it is said in the instruction part. For example, maybe it fits in better to rephrase the ending sentence in the opening paragraph as "we need more evidence regarding the library records, the Waymarsh citizen's reading habits and the design of the first survey."

可能看起来有些太琐碎，但感觉扣题的多:mad

此外，求加入作文互改小组:dizzy:

tesolchinaUID: 2191404

isabellaxia 发表于 2014-11-5 07:02
从另一个帖子跳过来的，发现进了一个GRE AW大牛的坑 ：）

Regarding this argument, I am thinking ma ...

嗯 你的建议很好 措辞确实可以更扣题一些  
其实我是希望你回答一下上面的问题
欢迎加入小组 目前很多组员写提纲不是很积极
希望你能坚持多写

tesolchinaUID: 2191404

25) The following was written as a part of an application for a small-business loan by a group of developers in the city of Monroe.
A jazz music club in Monroe would be a tremendously profitable enterprise. Currently, the nearest jazz club is 65 miles away; thus, the proposed new jazz club in Monroe, the C-Note, would have the local market all to itself. Plus, jazz is extremely popular in Monroe: over 100,000 people attended Monroe's annual jazz festival last summer; several well-known jazz musicians live in Monroe; and the highest-rated radio program in Monroe is 'Jazz Nightly,' which airs every weeknight at 7 P.M. Finally, a nationwide study indicates that the typical jazz fan spends close to $1,000 per year on jazz entertainment.

Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.


In this loan application, the developers argue that the proposed jazz club C-note would make profit considering the lack of competition, the popularity of Jazz in the Monroe and the study about how jazz fans spend money. We need to collect more evidence about all these issues in order to better evaluate the argument.

To begin with, we need more information about whether the proposed jazz club will meet with any competition. While the nearest jazz club is 65 miles away, the jazz fans in Monroe may still go over there if there is highway or subway that allow the people to travel conveniently.  Therefore, we need to know if the jazz fans have access to cars and whether there are highway or subway in place. In addition, we also need to know if there is other competition from sources like radio program ‘Jazz Nightly’ or jazz bands that may perform on the streets in Monroe that may threaten the profitability of C-note.

In addition, we need more evidence to decide if Jazz is indeed popular in Monroe and if such popularity can lead to the prosperity of C-note.  We need to know how many people among the 100,000 people in the jazz festivals are local, hardcore jazz fans who would go to a jazz club like C-note. Maybe a significant portion of the people in the festival are tourists who are not living in Monroe and will not go to C-note regularly. Or a good number of people found in festivals are schoolchildren who will not have time to go to the club during the school year. Likewise, unless we know for sure the radio listeners who enjoy jazz program would actually go to jazz club, the popularity of Jazz Nightly would not necessarily mean C-note will be attractive as well. As far as the jazz musicians living in Monroe are concerned, we need to know if their choice to live here has anything to do with the popularity of Jazz at all.  Maybe they live here for reasons totally unrelated to Jazz.  

Finally, we need more evidence about how jazz fans in Monroe spend money on Jazz entertainment. The nationwide study is useful only if the jazz fans in Monroe are similar to the samples collected for the study. Therefore, we need to know more about how the samples were collected for the study and the demographic information of jazz fans in Monroe to decide if the study results are relevant. Also, we have to look into how much money a typical jazz fan in Monroe would spend on a jazz club like C-note. Maybe the jazz fans would prefer to spend money on Jazz CDs or related musical instruments. If C-note could not generate enough revenue, it will not make profits.  

Overall speaking, to decide whether the proposed C-note club will make profits, we need to collect evidence about the issues discussed above.   

tesolchinaUID: 2191404

argument 14

The following appeared as part of an article in a business magazine.

"A recent study rating 300 male and female Mentian advertising executives according to the average number of hours they sleep per night showed an association between the amount of sleep the executives need and the success of their firms. Of the advertising firms studied, those whose executives reported needing no more than 6 hours of sleep per night had higher profit margins and faster growth. These results suggest that if a business wants to prosper, it should hire only people who need less than 6 hours of sleep per night."

Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.

以下是14的范文，请大家读完后，将它改写为argument 118

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.  

注意尽管题目要求不同但是结构和内容基本一致 只需要在措辞上进行调整


   

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The article argues that companies should hire people who need less sleep because these employees are more likely to succeed based on a survey of 300 advertising executives.  A number of assumptions have been made about the generalisability of the survey result, the reliability of the reported need of sleep and other related issues.  We need to examine the assumptions carefully in order to assess the argument.  

To begin with, the assumption that the survey results can be applied more broadly may not hold true.  The subjects of the survey are all from a single industry, namely, advertising.  Maybe it is important for people in this field to burn the midnight’s oil to prosper.  But this rule may not apply to other industries, for example, insurance or manufacturing.  In addition, the survey only asks the executives who may have to work extra hours to lead the companies.  But for employees at lower level sleeping less may not be very helpful for achieving success.  

In addition, it is assumed that the executives actually need little sleep as reported in the survey.  In other words, the assumption is that the subjects were telling the truth about their lifestyles during the survey.  It is possible that the survey respondents just want to impress others or show their attitudes towards sleep when answering the questions. Without further data to verify the reliability of the survey results, it is not reasonable to apply the finding in the hiring processes.  

Another assumption being made is that the need of less sleep is the main reason why the executives were successful. As we all know, correlation does not necessarily imply causation.  A host of other factors unrelated to sleep may have caused the success of the executives. For example, they might happen to have a good team of people working efficiently towards their goals.  Or they were lucky enough to meet some clients who were willing to pay higher fees which boosted the profit margins and the growth rates. Without looking into how they achieved success, it is too hasty to attribute their accomplishments to their sleep patterns.   

Finally, it is also assumed that executives with less need for sleep can succeed in the long term.  Maybe they manage to accomplish more than their peers with their abilities to sleep less.  But we do not know how the relatively small amount of sleep would have any negative impact on their health and their performance in the long term.  We also do not know how their lifestyles may affect the overall job satisfaction of themselves and their co-workers.  If their abilities to sleep less would enable them to work overtime, maybe they would also force their colleagues to work overtime, which may not benefit the long-term success of a company.  

In conclusion, it is not reasonable to recommend hiring people who need less sleep based on this survey on a relatively small group of executives from a single industry.  More information is needed before we can check the assumptions discussed above and make a more reasonable hiring policy.  

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