Acing the gre 10 pptx

Be sure you get adequate exercise during this last week. It will help you sleep soundly, and exercise also helps rid your body and mind of the effects of anxiety. Don’t tackle any new physical skills, though, or overdo any old ones. You don’t want to be sore and uncomfortable on test day. Check to see that your test appointment confirmation and your personal identification are in order and easily located. You will not need anything else because you are not allowed to bring anything in with you to the testing area. T Minus One It is the day before the GRE.You have done your preparation and you are as ready as you are going to be. Here are some dos and don’ts: DO: 1. Relax! 2. Find something amusing to do the night before—watch a good movie, have dinner with a friend, read a good book. 3. Get some light exercise. Walk, dance, swim. 4. Get all of your test materials together: confirmation of your appointment and proper identification. 5. Practice your visualization of GRE success. 6. Go to bed early. Get a good night’s sleep. DON’T: 1. Study. You have already prepared. Now relax. 2. Party. Keep it low key. 3. Eat anything unusual or adventurous—save it! 4. Try any unusual or adventurous activity—save it! 5. Allow yourself to get into an emotional exchange with anyone—a sibling, a friend, a parent, a signifi- cant other. If someone starts something, remind him or her that you have a GRE to take tomorrow and you need to postpone the discussion so you can focus on the test. Test Day On the day of the test, get up early enough to allow yourself extra time to get ready. If you have a morning appointment, set your alarm and ask a family member or friend to make sure you are up. Even if your appointment is later, make sure you don’t sleep longer than you usually do. Too much sleep can actually make you feel tired all day. Eat a light, healthy breakfast, even if you usually eat nothing in the morning. If you do usually eat break- fast, eat whatever you normally eat. Remember that sugary things are likely to let you down during the test. Protein-rich foods, such as eggs and cheese, are more apt to enhance your mental concentration and alert- ness. If you don’t normally drink coffee, don’t do it today. If you do normally have coffee, have one cup. More than that may make you jittery today. – STUDYING FOR THE GRE– 35 If you have scheduled an afternoon test, eat a light but satisfying lunch. Be sure not to stuff yourself before going in. Digestion drains blood from your brain, so it’s best to eat at least an hour before test time. Again, it’s best to eat protein because that will give you sustained energy. Stay away from sugar—you can always promise yourself a sweet treat after the test. Give yourself plenty of time to get to the testing center and avoid a last-minute rush. Plan to get to there ten to fifteen minutes early. Once you are settled at your computer, you will have as much time as you need to run through the test- ing procedures. They will be identical to the ones you have practiced in POWERPREP.Your timed exam will start only when you are ready to begin it. Just before you begin the actual test is a good time to visualize suc- cess one more time. Remember to breathe. Inhale fully into your abdomen and exhale at least as fully. If you feel your body tensing up, practice your relaxation exercises, tensing and releasing muscle groups to help them relax. Breathe. Remember not to spend too long on questions you don’t understand. You want to answer every ques- tion presented to you. On the other hand, take your time on the first ten to fifteen questions. You want to answer them correctly so that the computer will place you in the highest possible range. You can hide the onscreen clock if you want to, but do check in with it periodically in each section to see how you are doing on time. You don’t want to suddenly realize you have only five minutes and a lot of unanswered questions. If you find yourself getting anxious during the test, remember to breathe. If you need to, take a minute or two to slip into your relaxation visualization or your visualization of success. You have worked hard to pre- pare for this day. You are ready. After the GRE Celebrate! Reward yourself for a job well done.  In a Nutshell As you go through this review book, as you make your study plan, as you prepare to take the GRE, always remember why you are doing these things. You are doing them for your future, for your dreams, whatever they may be. Whenever you hit a snag, when you feel weary and unmotivated and are tempted to give up, remem- ber why you committed yourself to this path. Call up your vision of yourself, with your graduate degree in hand, living your dreams. Only you can make that vision a reality, but this book is here to help you take your first step. Read on. – STUDYING FOR THE GRE– 36  Pretest The following Analytical Writing assessment pretest contains two tasks: The first is to present your perspec- tive on an issue and the second is to analyze an argument. These two tasks provide you with practice for the same kinds of prompts you will see on the actual exam. This pretest will familiarize you with the Analytical Writing section and help you assess your strengths and weaknesses for this portion of the exam. First, you will practice presenting your perspective on an issue. On the official exam, you will have 45 minutes to complete this task. Take your time on this pretest; you will have plenty of time later in your stud- ies to practice under more official conditions. You will be asked to choose one of the two given prompts and decide what position you will take on the given issue. Then, you will be required to write an essay support- ing your position. Second, you will be given an opportunity to practice analyzing an argument. This task gives you brief directions and a short paragraph that presents an argument. Your job is to analyze and evaluate that argu- ment and present your critique in writing. On the official exam, you will have 30 minutes to complete this task. Again, take your time. CHAPTER The GRE Analytical Writing Section 3 37 When you are finished, compare your essays to the scoring guide on pages 55–56 and the following sam- ple top-score essays. The results of this pretest should help you plan your study time effectively and deter- mine the areas in which you need the most careful review and practice. Now, you can get started! Present Your Perspective on an Issue Read the following prompts and choose one of them on which to take a position. Use relevant reasons and examples as evidence to clearly express and support your point of view throughout your essay. Prompt: “Fiction should not be a required form of reading.” Prompt: “Grades should be abolished from the education system because the competition they feed reduces the amount of actual learning.” Analyze an Argument Read the following argument. Analyze and comment on how logical and/or reliable you find this argument. Prompt: The following appeared in a letter to the editor in the sports pages of a community newspaper. A teacher can’t earn more than $50,000 a year doing one of the toughest jobs in the world. These saints work a lot harder and deserve to get paid a lot more for the miracles they per- form on a daily basis. The average salary for professional athletes is $650,000. That’s more than ten times what the average public high school principal makes. Basketball players can earn millions in just one season, and football players can earn hundreds of thousands for just a 30-second commercial. Even benchwarmers make more in a month than teachers make. Who is more important — the person who taught you how to read and write so that you can succeed in life, or the jock who plays for a living? Top-Score Sample Issue Essay Prompt: “Fiction should not be a required form of reading.” Response: Remember the last book that captured your imagination and transported you to another place and time? Remember a book that made you fall in love with its characters, made you feel their pain and joy? Remember a story that taught you an important lesson or that helped you better understand others and make sense of the human condition? Fiction, unlike a user manual, a magazine article, or newspaper editorial, doesn’t present you with facts. It doesn’t inform you of current events or give you advice on how to cultivate a better garden. It proba- bly won’t help you decide which candidate to vote for or which product to buy, but that certainly doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a required form of reading. Indeed, fiction serves three crucial functions for human beings: It helps us understand the human condition — both – THE GRE ANALYTICAL WRITING SECTION– 38 ourselves and other people with whom we come into contact on a regular basis. In addition, it cultivates our imaginations. It can also teach us about history, psychology, and even biol- ogy and other sciences. Compassion for others is rooted in understanding and acceptance, and a good story brings us into the inner world of its characters so that we can understand them. In Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye, for example, Morrison peels away the layers of her charac- ters’ histories piece by piece, like an onion, until we see into their cores and understand what drives them. They may still do awful things to each other, but she shows us why they do the things that they do, and we learn that we shouldn’t judge others until we understand their pasts. Their stories are sad and painful, and we learn to love even the outcast Pecola. In fact, we learn that those outcasts are the ones who need our love the most. Many stories and novels also help us understand ourselves better. Joseph Conrad’s dark and powerful novel Heart of Darkness helps us understand the dark side that inhabits all humans. Conrad shows us that we need to acknowledge and explore this dark side in order to control it. It makes us question just how civilized we are and even what it means to be civ- ilized in the first place. This piece of fiction helps us understand what it means to be human and to negotiate the real world by presenting a specific story that illustrates what it means to be a part of the world. Furthermore, good fiction cultivates our imagination, which is more significant to us than some might think. Without imaginations, we would lead sad, empty lives. Imagination is cen- tral to human emotional health and is a key aspect of human intelligence. Facts are one thing; but facts can be useless unless coupled with imaginations. Fiction can help us keep our imagi- nation fresh and active. In a story like Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, for example, we are asked to imagine that Gregor, the main character, wakes up one morning, having turned into a giant bug. On first glance, this idea sounds crazy, but once we accept this premise and imagine Gre- gor as a five-foot-long cockroach, we can feel his family’s horror and imagine his agony as he finds himself trapped in his room and abandoned by those he loves. This story helps us stretch our minds so that we can more fully understand the world around us. Through fiction, people can also grow to understand scientific concepts or historical events that they might never have considered before. Fiction opens our minds to the world of possibility — it often explores “what could have been” or “what might be” through historical or science fiction. Fiction such as Jurassic Park can even help us understand scientific con- cepts like DNA. Although many scientists believe that it is not possible to recreate a dinosaur based on DNA from dinosaur blood preserved in fossilized mosquitoes, Michael Crichton introduced the concept to many people who might never have thought about it before. The book sparked my own interest in learning about a scientific concept in a more engaging context than a scientific journal or biology textbook. For example, after reading the book, I decided to do a little of my own research about DNA and how scientists use it. – THE GRE ANALYTICAL WRITING SECTION– 39 Fiction should definitely be a required form of reading for all students. Not only does it provide an opportunity to escape our daily lives, it also presents a different perspective of the world, one we might never have thought of before, while still informing us about the human condition. Fiction also has the potential to awaken our interest in parts of the world we may never have explored and in learning more about science or history in a more engaging way. Top-Score Sample Argument Essay Prompt: The following appeared in a letter to the editor in the sports pages of a community newspaper. A teacher can’t earn more than $50,000 a year doing one of the toughest jobs in the world. These saints work a lot harder and deserve to get paid a lot more for the miracles they per- form on a daily basis. The average salary for professional athletes is $650,000. That’s more than ten times what the average public high school principal makes. Basketball players can earn millions in just one season, and football players can earn hundreds of thousands for just a 30-second commercial. Even benchwarmers make more in a month than teachers make. Who is more important — the person who taught you how to read and write so that you can succeed in life, or the jock who plays for a living? Response: The author of this piece drives home the idea that professional athletes get paid too much, especially in comparison to teachers, who help you “succeed in life.” As much as anyone may believe that teachers deserve to be paid more than they earn or that some professional ath- letes are grossly overpaid, this author’s argument is not very effective. Much of the evidence and reasoning the author uses is flimsy and illogically reasoned — there is a shaky conclusion, counterarguments are not addressed, and the premises the author uses to support the con- clusion are not reasonably qualified. The conclusion drawn in this argument is, “These saints work a lot harder and deserve to get paid a lot more for the miracles they perform on a daily basis.” This sentence raises several red flags. First, the author draws a comparison between teachers and saints. It is true that teachers do noble work, and arguably, this work improves individuals and sometimes even society; however, neither of these duties makes teachers “saints.” Second, the author uses the word miracles to describe the results of teachers’ work. This word is emotionally charged, implying that a teacher’s work is amazing and fantastic. The connotation of the word miracle suggests bias in the author’s opinion of the teaching profession. Juxtaposed to calling the work of professional athletes “play,” the word “miracles” draws on the reader’s compassion, appealing to emotion rather than presenting impartial evidence. Finally, this claim is incom- plete. Teachers work harder than whom? Deserve to get paid more than whom? Although the answer “professional athletes” is implied, the claim does not explicitly state this. – THE GRE ANALYTICAL WRITING SECTION– 40 . still do awful things to each other, but she shows us why they do the things that they do, and we learn that we shouldn’t judge others until we understand their pasts. Their stories are sad and painful,. argument. Prompt: The following appeared in a letter to the editor in the sports pages of a community newspaper. A teacher can’t earn more than $50,000 a year doing one of the toughest jobs in the world. These. signifi- cant other. If someone starts something, remind him or her that you have a GRE to take tomorrow and you need to postpone the discussion so you can focus on the test. Test Day On the day of the