Analytical Writing – Junjun's Home

Scandals: Can that always be bad?

This is another GRE Analytical Writing exercise that comes from the following topic:

TOPIC: ISSUE185 – "Scandals-whether in politics, academia, or other areas-can be useful. They focus our attention on problems in ways that no speaker or reformer ever could."

More and more scandals are presenting in front of us through various mediums, including newspapers, magazines and internet. And they refer to every realm of our lives, ranging from politics to academia that drive people’s attention from one field to another. Some argues that such scandal to be good, with the reason that they can focus our attentions in different ways and lead to some fresh discoveries, but a question comes out in this way. Do they really matter in this way?

The formation, or those preconditions for scandals, carries various stories themselves, including the eager to success but without patience, a failure that is developed from the ideal anticipation from the reformers, etc, and in this way, such happening of scandals can really help people be aware of their mistakes and make attempts to overcome. Dating back to the 19th century in Europe, when people were exhausted to make a kind of non-stop working machine, existed George L. Push, a gentleman who was convinced on the existence of such machine, announced his success of building ups of such machine in a local newspaper. But his followers soon found it to be false since what he had made was only an ideal model, but without any realistic machine at all! The critics from the readers and his fans then drove to him like a storm. But soon after the in-depth discussion based on this scandal, people eventually accepted the fact that such machine can never be existed.

The scandals can also drive people to the new fields of research, the development of new policy that they are not initially focused. When getting focused, the reformers, scientists, etc can get more suggestions and critics from the public that boost their efficiency and reduce their possibility of failure. As a reformer that is proposing a new housing policy aiming at solving the housing problems for the disabled, they found very few citizen get interested on that at the begining. So he then conducted a test in some communities where the scandals then come out due to some faults on the proposal. The scandal draw people’s attention to this policy and people start to write to the newspapers and government for the deliveries of their new ideas. Then the policy is rapidly improved under these suggestions, while we cannot deny the contribution from the scandals.

But we must be aware that such benefit can hardly be brought to permanently. In fact, such severe scandals, especially those refer to the fields that are unknown to the public, can mislead them. Because such scandals can make people feel the related affairs unbelievable, such as a new policy, a new skill and a new medicine, and the anticipation for these from the public would be greatly mitigated. A real example on the investment can help explain this. We are dating back to the 1920s in US, where there were still no equivalent accounting standards among the listed companies and financial fraud were popular. But when some frauds were getting to known to the public, the public trust on the accounting number were totally lost and people start to sell out their stocks in hand. The consequence of such scandals is known to all, that is, the Great Deficiency. It is the scandal that brings all the investors into the disaster.

That’s why we are caring so much on scandals. For the public, it is a good way for them to refer to some new fields that are strange to them, offering them new room of thinking. While it is apparently more significant to the reformers and government, since such scandals from different areas can help them to improve their developing policy, skills etc, but we must also be aware that such scandals can also reduce the trust from the public that can lead to severe consequence sometimes. We are not to deny the usefulness of scandals, but we should also be aware of their potential harms.

Exercise for GRE Analytical Writing: Quick action or A Reconsideration?

This is an exercise for my coming GRE Analytical Writing section, if you are interested, please provide me some suggestions on how to improve the writing skills. The reason why I upload them here is because I find the titles from the analytical writings, especially that for issues, are really good topics that can evoke our thinking in depth.

Thanks for your comments and they are always welcome

Following is the original article that i wrote:

Nowadays people are becoming so eager to succeed that they are becoming quicker to take action but rather than taking a good consideration before that. In fact, with a fast speed of working and higher efficiency of action sometimes do provide us greater production. However, such quick reactions can hardly always work.

An adequate thorough thinking for some actions that are to be taken is beneficial, especially for some important decisions. A common experience that can convince us is that we can make a decision in seconds, but we can never finish an intricate task in seconds. Putting a pre-determined decision into practice involves many steps that we can hardly reach wholly in a flash, and a thorough thinking brings us the new opportunity on such thinking. A good example for this is making a plan for a chemical experiment. It is the truth that an initial plan can be made in quite a quick action, while, more importantly, we should examine and reconsider the very steps during this procedure, on the medicine we use, the controlling group we set, and the equipment that we may ask for. Without such intense thinking on realms of this experiment, various problems can occur during the coming procedure, and, some fatal errors that we failed to realize prior to their occurrence can sometimes directly turn this experiment into failure.

And such thinking can take something that we miss at a first glance into consideration, such as the consequence of some actions that can bring us great influence. Suppose that a local government is thinking about a project of the establishment of an industry that can produce high pollution to the environment, but its establishment can boost the economic growth as well. Taking the viewpoint of short-seeing, a kind of thinking method that only covers the influence or that consequence of a specified event in a short period, the local government would pass the decision of the establishment on the consideration of the economic growth. But once the staffs take reconsideration on such plan in depth, more or less, he or she would think about the pollution matters. And a professional evaluation can then be taken, which involves professors and experts on environmental science, to suggest the magnitude of its pollution on local environment. Once the cost on environment is higher than the economical profit, we suggest it as the result of evaluation, this project would be denied rather than the acceptance.

But a fast reaction can make as being competitive to the other opponents, which is of great significance contemporarily. This frequently occurs in business world. An investing analyst working for an investing firm would require taking intermediate action when they find an investing opportunity rather than a time costly reconsideration; otherwise the opportunity would never be back. The other example exists in the industry of manufacturing, a competitive industry nowadays. The key determinants of the profitability of a firm are depending on whether they can turn a good design into productivity with adequate high efficiency. Only when being with high productivity that the firm can get the dominant role in industry and be profitable. Any delay on this procedure can be consequential.

In sum, taking good consideration before the action can help people be more aware of the possible difficulties and problems that they can probably meet, and such thinking also offers people an intense understanding on the steps that would involved in their actions. What’s more, such consideration can prevent people from making some errors taking quick action but missed the awful consequence it can induce. But admittedly, under some occasions, quick actions are required; a delay on action can lose the opportunity sometimes.

Delay on GRE Writing: Depression

It has been quite a long time since the last passage with the language of English. I don’t have a strong desire to make an English writing blog, I don’t have the feeling of this language, but unfortunately, I don’t have the capability of wrtting this passage in Chinese as well. I envy the good writers, either in Chinese or English, that describes the sights naturally with beautiful words and marvelous feeling like a poem.

The postponing of the writing section do harm greatly on my mood. Not only the moeny that I spent for, but also the failure that I get from my heart as a deny to my decision perviously. I don’t know if it is called self-induced pressure, but an approaching of an exam without any good feeling is absolutely not a good signal, which exists not only in exams, but in any realms of lives. As a modern student who is surviving in an emerging economy, it is getting too many choices to make, too many alternatives to consider, and too many failures that may occur. Frankly speaking, I don’t have the intention to take such an exam, a high-level challenge among the English exams, but my consideration of my future is making his full efforts to persuade me to do so. Hereby, three kinds of pressure, parental, peer, self-induced are all intertwined.

But we do have to re-consider the nature and purpose that we study English. As a most developed unit globally, the American pie is pouringly influencing the rest of the word, from economics, military to socialism, even to our daily lives. A primary purpose of English thus comes out that English is to be a key to the door that one can step forward outside the motherland that feed him, and TOEFL and GRE as well as IELTS and GMAT are becoming a popular topic on campus permanently. For my own history of learning which can be dated back to 15 years ago when I was still a lad of 11 and started to know what ABC was like, I never reached the beauty of this language, refered to as English literature such as poems and arts, and the related civilizaton and culture, such as a basic introduciton on the christian conventions. While instead, I have participated in tens, may be over hundreds of English exams and contests, size and levels varying.

An exams-oriented education obviously fails to bring us good usage of the knowledge that we were infused, not only of English, but for many other subjects. A trip to Hawaii in December contributes me great feeling on this. Even though the paper can be fully presented at a symposium, and a discussion can be conducted, big troubles occurs on dining. If the surviving is treated as a criteria here, I dare say, the English education don’t provide me great support on my survival in US. While, I am surely these words may be argued as unsubstantial and unpersuasive by referring to the fundamentals.

Even there are some sort of complaints, I am not Mark Twain who had the courage to quite the election that I fully respect for, stepping forward under the intertwining of all the pressures can be the only solution for me. I don’t know how the future will be, will it be a sunny day? Or will it be of great fog? No one can tell me, and no one can answer it convictively, I suppose.

I appreciate very much a piece of words from Ode to the West Wind, written by Shirley,

If winter comes, can spring be far behind?