Timothy Avants - Ace the GRE Writing Assessment

Copyright 2007 by Tim Avants

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To my lovely wife Berna

The following is designed to provide general information needed to make your Writing Assessment Test pain free. The information includes procedures for testing, assessment content, and various items that will prove useful throughout the entire testing process.

1. The Two GRE Writing Assessment components
2. The Official 250 Questions downloadable at the ETS website
3. Procedures
4. Using the GRE Word Processor
5. The Scoring System for the GRE Essays
6. Score Reports

The ETS has an official website where you can download 250 official questions free: 125 for the Issue segment and 125 for the Argument segment. The student receives a question at random during the test. The site is located at www gre.org/writing.html .

Like most computer adaptive tests, the writing assessment section will have a tutorial prior to the beginning of the writing assessment. This will allow you time to acquaint yourself with the computer. Pencil and paper will be provided should you need to make notes while you are writing. Once you have completed the Issue section, you can move on to the Argument section. However, once you exit the Issue segment, you cannot return, even if you finished with time remaining. In addition, there is no break between the Issue and the Argument sections.

The testing system does not allow you to return to either of the two essays once youve moved on. There is no spell check, so be sure you check over your work.

Two different readers score each section of the Assessment for a total of four readers. All of the scores are averaged to make one score for the Argument and Issue sections together. Lets look at a sample score.

The total of the Issue and the Argument sections equals 15. Divide 15 by 4 (number of readers) and that equals 3.75. The average would be rounded up to a score of 4 on the Writing Assessment, because any score over 50% is rounded up. Here, the 3.75 is over the 3.5, so we rounded the score up to 4.

You will also receive a percentile rank. For instance, a rank of 70% indicates that you scored higher than 70% of the test-takers and 30% of test-takers scored higher than you.

Scores are mailed to you and to the schools in about three weeks. Percentile rank is not reported to the schools.

The schools determine how much weight that they want to give to the scores of the Writing Assessment when considering applicants to graduate school. You should check with the school you want to attend prior to taking the exam. Be advised, though, that many schools will look at a high score on the Writing Assessment and allow that to offset a lower score on the Quantitative section, especially if the student is applying to a graduate program in the humanities, such as English or Sociology.

Before we begin on particular test items, we need to review some fundamentals of sentence structure and punctuation to ensure success. Most often, I read (as a college professor) excellent essays that only receive a C because of punctuation mistakes that cause problems with logic. These are most often problems that could easily be avoided with an hour of review.

The comma is used to set off words, several-word phrases, or clauses. There are two basic rules I like to use when determining when to put a comma in a sentence.

If you have an independent clause, and something comes to the left of the subject, and its not an article, and its not an adjective, set it off with a comma.

Example: On the way , [we stopped at the store.]

S-V

Independent Clause (IC)

The big boy ate the candy.

Art. -adj.-S-V-art. -Direct Object (DO)

There is no comma in the second example, because it does not follow the rule (the words before the subject are an article[art.] and an adjective[adj.]). We said that the clause must be an independent clause.

That means it must be able to stand by itself. If it does not, its not an independent clause. If its not independent, its either a sentence fragment or a dependent clause. A dependent clause will usually have a word at the very beginning of it that will make it depend on another sentence to come after it to complete the thought. For example:

When I was a boy, I ate candy

Dep. Clause (DC)IC

The dependent clause usually has a subject and a verb, and it is referred to as a subordinate clause. The subordinator makes an independent clause dependent. Generally, a subordinator is usually a preposition: in, on, after, under, whenever, before, while, among, next, toward.

Not all dependent clauses necessarily have a subject and verb, but, for the sake of discussion, we will talk in generalizations. Therefore, although a clause or phrase which comes before an independent clause may not have both a subject and verb, we usually set it off by using both rules described here.

Along the banks, fires were glowing.

Around the bend, a truck had crashed.

In December, we stay in the house. After dinner, we ate dessert.

Up the coast, there were many sea gulls.

Under the table, the boy played carelessly.

Simply put, if there is no trauma, do not add a comma.

I dont want to oversimplify, but we can usually look at the sentence and determine what is pertinent information and what is extra. By doing this, combined with the formal rule, we can figure out where to put the comma. For example:

Today, I went to the store.

Yesterday, I went shopping.

The important information comes after the comma in both sentences. It is not really important that the person went to the store today. Simply the fact that he went to the store is important. The same logic is true with the second sentence. Now, if I want to make the information of today just as important as the fact that I went to the store, I will integrate that into the structure of the independent clause. For example:

I went to the store today.

I went shopping yesterday.

I want to eat chicken tonight.

Lets view these sentences in how they are actually spoken. If the time tag is at the beginning of the sentence, there will be a slight pause in the sentence before I start to say the information in the independent clause. This pause is a change in tone that leads me to believe that I must include a comma. Note that the tone goes down where the comma is inserted, and it rises again after the comma in the independent clause.

Tone: ___________________________________