How to Excel AWA, bringing the research simplified to the students of GMAT, GRE & TOEFL

1. How to Excel AWA, bringing the research simplified to the students of GMAT, GRE & TOEFL By Satyadhar Joshi shivgan3@yahoo.com http://onlineclasses.nanotechbiz.org/

2. Contents of Plan • What is E rater • How to optimize you score • Research on the structure of e rater • Basic errors of grammar derived from GMAT • Minimizing errors using critical reading of your own essay • Building basic Pre-knowledge • Sample Essays • Conclusion http://www.ets.org/research/capabilities/automated_scoring www.ets.org/Media/Tests/GRE/pdf/awintro.pdf

3. Scoring Graph for GRE http://www.powerscore.com/gre/help/scoringscale.cfm

4. Introduction to E-rater (GRE-GMAT) • It’s a software developed by ETS • It is used to rate Essays • Very sophisticated techniques used The E-rater favors transitional words • Ordinal numbers that introduce examples or reasons: first, second, third, first of all, etc. • Transitional words that relate each sentence to other: since, because, therefore, thus, etc. • Mood words that indicate the author's position: fail, ignore, overestimate, underestimate, exaggerate, misrepresent, overlook, etc. • Counter-evidence indicators: actually, despite, admittedly, except, even though, nonetheless, nevertheless, although, however, in spite of, do, does, may, might, etc.

5. Some experts advice that: • to use transitional words • to include a topic sentence in every paragraph • that the e-rater is very sensitive to spelling and grammatical mistakes (contrary to the real GRE) and • is not sensitive at all to the intuition of your writing and to the organization of your essay (e.g. the e-rater never identified my main point). Taking all these into consideration I took one more test and guess what.... 6/6 although my ideas where a little bid stupid, my examples where out of place and the e-rater did not identify any main idea in my essays. Just I had to take care to give a LENGTHY and free of mistakes essay.

6. Length • First note that your essay will be graded by an e-rater, which is software that checks your essay for structural keywords and overall organization. Then it will be graded by a human grader who has about 2 minutes to read each essay. • According to Princeton Review "Cracking the GMAT," more length is better to get a high score from the e-rater (software that ). However 800score suggests that going on and on will irritate the human grader. I have read in a number of places that 300-500 words is a good length.

7. Criterion (ETS) • The Criterion® Online Writing Evaluation service provides instructors and students with reliable evaluations of English-language essays. • It delivers immediate score reporting and diagnostic feedback that students can use to revise and resubmit their essays. • Instructors can use their own topics or select from the Criterion topic library of more than 400 essay assignments at various skill levels. http://www.ets.org/criterion

8. Controversial Areas pertaining to Essay • Human vs. Machine • It does not assess specific content knowledge • ETS Essay-Similarity-Detection Software http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/GRE/pdf/awintro.pdf

9. Essay writing has these basic functions • Grammar • Content (Examples related to the essay) • Critical Reasoning • Idioms • Punctuation • Triggering words • Arguments and counter arguments

10. ETS says:

11. EST further says:

12. Evaluating Multiple Aspects of Coherence in Student Essays http://www.aclweb.org/anthology-new/N/N04/N04-1024.pdf

13. Exploring the Feedback and Revision Features of CriterionYigalAttali ETS, Princeton, NJPaper presented at the National Council on Measurement in Education Summary • Relation of length to grade • Critique, is comprised of a suite of programs that evaluates and provides feedback for errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics, identifies the essay’s discourse structure, and recognizes undesirable stylistic features • 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. http://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/erater_NCME_2004_Attali_B.pdf

14. Types of error http://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/erater_NCME_2004_Attali_B.pdf

15. Grammar Errors http://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/erater_NCME_2004_Attali_B.pdf

16. Three main errors in Grammar • Be very careful about fragmented sentences. • Possessive errors of vs. ’s • Subject Very Agreement • Garbled sentences

17. Usage Errors in Essay

18. Style Errors

19. Devastating errors Below are the ranking of most costly errors which can take your score down: • Garbled sentences • Repetition of words • Missing Apostrophe • Fused Words • Capital Nouns • Inappropriate use of words or phases

20. Garbled Words • I cdnuoltblveieetaht I cluodaulacltyunesdnatnrdwaht I was rdgnieg>The phaonmnealpweor of the hmuanmnidaoccdrnig to a rscheearch at > CmabrigdeUinervtisy, it deosn'tmattaer in whahtoredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olnyiprmoatnttihng is taht the frist and lsatltteer be in the rghitpclae. The rset can be a taotlmses and you can sitllraed it wouthit a porbelm.

21. Framing of Paragraph • First and last lines are important • Conveying words are important use all of them • Idioms are important • Paragraphs should have sentences of good length • Writing strategy must 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. • 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.

23. Using pre-knowledge • Examples are important • One area of each examples that the E-rater understand

24. Idioms • Lexicon complexity is an important parameter, use as many good words as possible Book: ChandreshAgrawal, CAT PriyankaPrakshan

25. Punctuations One of the most important area of Essays • Comma (series, introduction, clauses, interjections, conjunction) • Use of comma with transition words • Helps in avoided choppy sentences Page 508 of Book: Nova’s GRE

26. Style • Transition • Figurative language • Dictions

27. Pre-knowledge on USA • Areas to Quote examples in Essay can be: • American freedom History • George Washington ( the first president of USA), current BarackObama • Abraham Lincoln served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led the country through the American Civil War, and ended slavery. • Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, leader in the African American civil rights movement. Worked for civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi.

28. Scientist • Thomas Alva Edison (American; Bulb, camera, etc) • Sergey M. Brin & Lawrence E. Page(Google) • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton (English) • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan • Charles Darwin • Big Bang

29. Artists • Michelangelo (Italy) • Pablo Picasso (France) • Leonardo da Vinci (Italy) Painter • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Rockwell USA

30. Politics & Wars • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union • Benito Mussolini (World War 2) • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana,_Princess_of_Wales • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa • World is Flat: Thomas Friedman

31. Economics • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_yuan • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol • World Bank and International Monetary Fund • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett

32. Sample Essay Content "Societies should try to save every plant and animal species, regardless of the expense to humans in effort, time, and financial well-being.” • PETA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_for_the_Ethical_Treatment_of_Animals • Kyoto Protocol • Global Warming & Carbon Tax • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Fund_for_Nature WWF • Framing/ Grammar/ Punctuations / etc will reduce marks

33. GRE Analytical Writing ISSUE Essay Topic – 72 (ETS) • "The true value of a civilization is reflected in its artistic creations rather than in its scientific accomplishments.“ • All planning will help you

34. A few of GRE Analytical Writing ISSUES & Essay Topics (source ETS) • "Most societies do not take their greatest thinkers seriously, even when they claim to admire them.” • "The best ideas arise from a passionate interest in commonplace things." • "It is more important to allocate money for immediate, existing social problems than to spend it on long-term research that might help future generations.“ • "A nation should require all its students to study the same national curriculum until they enter college rather than allow schools in different parts of the nation to determine which academic courses to offer.“ • "The most effective way to understand contemporary culture is to analyze the trends of its youth.“ • “When someone achieves greatness in any field — such as the arts, science, politics, or business — that person’s achievements are more important than any of his or her personal faults.” http://www.testpreppractice.net/GRE/awa-samples/gre-awa-essay-samples.html

35. More topics • It is necessary for everyone to read poetry, novels, mythology and other types of imaginative literature. • Academic disciplines have become so specialized in recent years that scholars' ideas reach only a narrow audience. Until scholars can reach a wider audience, their ideas will have little use. • Governments must ensure that their major cities receive the financial support they need in order to thrive, because it is primarily in cities that a nation's cultural traditions are preserved and generated. • All nations should help support the development of a global university designed to engage students in the process of solving the world's most persistent social problems.

36. The Argument Essay • Argument in the official test bank contains 3-5 major logical fallacies • Drawing an unfair analogy (ignoring relevant dissimilarities between two things when comparing them) • Generalizing from particulars (relying on a small number of particular cases — too small to reach a reliable general conclusion) • Confusing chronology with causation (because one event occurs after another, the earlier event caused the later event) • Go for breadth, not depth. • what additional information is needed to better evaluate the argument, and/or • what additional evidence (facts) would serve to strengthen the argument. http://majortests.com/gre/argument.php

37. Arguments • All the arguments will be seriously flawed. You will lose marks if you do not identify the major faults. The main categories of logical error that you should be able to spot are: Generalizations • Problems with surveys and statistics • False causes • False analogies • Hidden assumptions • Inadequate authority

38. Many problems of modern society cannot be solved by laws and the legal system because moral behavior cannot be legislated. • It is true that many problems of modern society cannot be solved by laws, as moral behavior is something for which a person has to be responsible himself. Although there are some problems that can be solved by laws, other problems like moral behavior have to be solved by the persons themselves.It is a persons responsibility to judge his behavior and follow the rules formed for the welfare of the society. Law cannot punish every person for his or her behavior. For example, to save water or not to waste water is the moral responsibility of every member of a society. Any law cannot punish an individual for such behavior. In the first look, it does not seem to be a big harm to the society but in the end, he is wasting a precious thing. Similarly, the behaviors like throwing plastic in public or spitting in public places is certainly not good behavior. Laws can do little to stop these behaviors. However, there are countries where there are laws to punish a person who does not behave properly in public places.Similarly, with the invention of internet, there are more and more of cyber crimes where it is difficult to find a witness. A person can easily hide his identity, his name, sex, address on the internet. Hence, it becomes very difficult for law to punish the criminal. Although now a days, lawmakers have also found the ways to identify these persons. However, here again, moral behavior can play a role in reducing these kind of crimes.However, we cannot underestimate the importance of laws in our life. We need laws to protect ourselves and punish those who harm the society. Law helps in balancing the society to be more harmonious and peaceful. Although moral behavior cannot be legislated, thorough enforcement of a few laws can help to solve social problems to some extent. Laws teach people many things about moral behavior and force them to follow those rules. If everyone conforms to laws, it would be very easy for everyone to get rid of social problems.Still, there are people who find it difficult to follow the laws. Then for these types of people, there should be strict punishments. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to live in the society. Only enactment of stringent laws can protect everyone in the society from the problems caused by the non-moral behavior of a few persons.To make our society, we have to instill good values in the society at the school and college levels. It will help to teach the students a subject related to moral behavior in their schools and colleges. This will help in reducing problems related to moral behavior.Hence, although moral behavior cannot be legislated, laws have to be there to curb the problems arising out of immoral behavior. The society and laws have to work hand-in-hand to solve the problems of the modern society and to make our society peaceful.

39. Publication Referred • Tetreault, J. & Chodorow, M. (2008). The ups and downs of prepositional error detection in ESL writing (PDF). In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Computational Linguistics (pp. 865-872). Manchester, UK: COLING 2008 Organizing Committee. • Tetreault, J., & Chodorow, M. (2008, August). Native judgments of non-native usage: Experiments in preposition error detection (PDF). In COLING 2008: Proceedings of the workshop on Human Judgements in Computational Linguistics (pp. 24-32). Manchester, UK: COLING 2008 Organizing Committee. • Chodorow, M., Tetreault, J., & Han, N-R. (2007). Detection of grammatical errors involving prepositions (PDF). In Proceedings of the Fourth ACL-SIGSEM Workshop on Prepositions (pp. 25-30). Prague, Czech Republic: Association for Computational Linguistics. • Higgins, D., & Burstein, J. (2006). Sentence similarity measures for essay coherence (PDF). In Proceedings of the seventh international workshop on computational semantics (IWCS-7), Tilburg, The Netherlands. • Burstein, J., & Higgins, D. (2005). Advanced capabilities for evaluating student writing: Detecting off-topic essays without topic-specific training (PDF). In Proceedings of the international conference on artificial intelligence in Education, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. • Attali, Y. (2004, April). Exploring the feedback and revision features of Criterion (PDF). Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Council on Measurement in Education, San Diego, CA.

40. Publication Referred continued • Han, N-R., Chodorow, M., & Leacock, C. (2004). Detecting errors in English article usage with a maximum entropy classifier trained on a large, diverse corpus (PDF). In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, Lisbon, Portugal: European Language Resources Association. • Higgins, D., Burstein, J., Marcu, D., & Gentile, C. (2004). Evaluating multiple aspects of coherence in student essays (PDF). In S. Dumais, D. Marcu, & S. Roukos (Eds.), HLT-NAACL 2004: Main Proceedings (pp. 185-192). Boston, MA: Association for Computational Linguistics. • Burstein, J., Chodorow, M., & Leacock, C. (2003, August). Criterion: Online essay evaluation: An application for automated evaluation of student essays (PDF). Proceedings of the fifteenth annual conference on innovative applications of artificial intelligence, Acapulco, Mexico. (This paper received an AAAI Deployed Application Award.) • Burstein, J., & Wolska, M. (2003, April). Toward evaluation of writing style: Finding overly repetitive word use in student essays (PDF). In Proceedings of the 10th conference of the European chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Budapest, Hungary. • Burstein, J., Marcu, D., Andreyev, S., & Chodorow, M. (2001, July). Towards automatic classification of discourse elements in essays (PDF). In Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (pp. 98-105). Toulouse, France: Association for Computational Linguistics. • Leacock, C., & Chodorow, M. (2001). Automatic assessment of vocabulary usage without negative evidence (TOEFL® Research Rep. No. 67, ETS RR-01-21). Princeton, NJ: ETS.

41. Books • Book: Nova’s GRE • Barron’s GRE

42. Resources on internet • http://www.urch.com/forums/gmat-awa/50851-6-0-my-awa-experience.html