GRE essay writting needs critique

[Charlie_Yu]

From now on I will practice essay writing for the GRE exam, but I need someone to critique my works. Each essay will be posted on a seperate reply. Thanks everyone in advance.

Issue No. 167 "It is impossible for an effective political leader to tell the truth all the time. Complete honesty is not a useful virtue for a politician."

From history to modern times, there are cases and cases of successful political leaders who didn't tell the truth, be it for the interest of his own or his people. Yet they were successful leaders. This leads to an assumption that honesty is not an useful virtue for an effective politican.

Admittedly, an effective political leader sometimes just needs to avoid telling the truth for various reasons. Afterall, he, as a leader, needs to protect the interests of his own political party. It is not very wise if telling the truth would lead to his facing severe criticism, often extravaggered by mass media, that would certainly hamper the effectiveness of his policies and catching himself into trouble. It is also acceptable to lie strategically, that telling the truth would only lead to necessary fear and doesn't help anyone at all.

However, that doesn't mean that honesty is not an useful virtue for a politican. In a democratic system, a leader is elected by its people, and when someone is lying too much, people will see it and he wouldn't be trusted anymore, in some cases even overturned. Every year there are political leaders around the world have to resign from his job because of being dishonest. A political leader will only be trusted, so that he is evaluated positively by its people, and be able to run his policies smoothly by being an honest man.

In order to be an effective political leader, one needs to be honest most of the time so that he will be trusted by its people, but also sometimes he has to be wise enough avoid telling the truth if it would bring more harm than good for his political interests. Whether to tell the truth or not on a particular issue is a very important decision that a leader must make many times, each time carefully, otherwise his political career would come to an end quickly.

Honesty is never unimportant for an effective political leader; It's when to be dishonest more important.

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I can feel I am very unfamiliar with politics, and fail to produce examples and evdience to support my argument.

[Charlie_Yu]

Issue "Formal educational credentials should be the most important factor in hiring employees."

Having a good normal education credentials are more and more emphasised over the pass few years. Every year, students struggle to enter good colleges, fight for good grades, and it seems that they will get a good job and be successful. However, for an empolyer, is formal education credentials the most important factor in order to determine whether a potential employee is competent?

Formal education credentials are quite an important measurement in the process of hiring empolyees, as they can tell what kinds of specific knowledge one had learnt over years of studying. This is very important for some fields such as medical studies; a hospital must ensure that one had recieved enough related knowledge and medical training before hiring him as a doctor, to make sure he is capable for the job and it is legal to hire him. Besides, those with good grades at school are better equipped with knowledge, and one can say that there is some correlation between good knowledge and being successful.

However, knowledge is not the only essential quality to succeed. Having good grades would only mean that one is able to handle exams well, and that's a far cry from being smart in his job. Different kinds of jobs require different quality in order to be good. For example, working experience is more vital for a salesman who needs to persuade people to buy his products. A saleman with good education credentials may have learnt in school how to deal with people by theory, but dealing with people is a complex issues and one just can't learn enough of it in school. On the other hand, an experienced saleman had practiced enough on how to sell his products and is more likely to do his job well.

There are even other important qualities that is not reflected by eductaion credentials, such as leadership and teamworking. Most professions require its staff to cooperate, even for fields require much specific knowledge like medical studies or engineering. Cooperation skills one may have learnt in school are very little. For a student, extracurricular activities provide more training grounds for cooperation skills than regular syllabus. One may practice how to work with your colleagues to finish specific tasks effectively, how to deal with people from other cooperations, and get a chance to overcome the fear and speak in public in extracurricular activities. None of those will be reflected in your formal educational credentials.

That being said, while formal education credentials are of certain importance, it's not the only important quality. Employers should look for employees not only with good grades in school, but also who is an all-rounded person.
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IMO not a very coherent article

[Charlie_Yu]

Argument 123The following appeared in a health newsletter.

"Eating a heavy meal may increase the risk of heart attack. A recent survey of 2,000 people who had had a heart attack revealed that 158 of them said they had eaten a heavy meal within 24 hours before their heart attack, and 25 of them said they had eaten a heavy meal within 2 hours before their heart attack. Eating and digesting food releases hormones into the bloodstream and temporarily increases heart rate and blood pressure slightly. Both of these things put stress on the heart. Therefore, people who are at risk of having a heart attack can lower that risk by not overeating."

The writer was trying to convince us that eating a heavy meal may increase the chance of a heart attack, and listed several supporting arguements. But while the arguments looked locally plausible in the first place, there are several flaws within.

First of all, the writer quoted some statistics on how many people who had had a heart attack had eaten a heavy meal before heart attack occured. Yet the writer didn't tell us the eating habits of those interviewed, or how often did they had a heavy meal, and we are unable to make a meaningful interepetion whether such figures do indicate a higher chance of heart attack or not. The writer didn't show a connection between overeating and increased heart attack rates.

Even if the figures showed a higher heart attack rate among overeating people it can be contributed to many factors. Those having heavy meals may have unhealthy eating habits that lead to overweighing and other undesirable heart conditions, and having a heavy meal only may not be enough to trigger a heart attack.

Likewise there is not enough reasons to believe that not overeating would actually lower the risk of heart attack. The writer claimed that overeating increases heart attack rate because eating and disgesting food put stress on the heart. However even if a person has a light meal he still have to eat and disgest, and by writer's claim, putting stress on the heart. So his claim could not lead to the conclusion that not overeating would reduce the chance of heart attacks.

[Meruchi]

Hey ,

I ahve gone thru one topic and unearthed that you have given a good thought to the topic 167.But , the only thing is at some areas it is too wordy and also possess some grammatical mistakes. For ex,in this line "there are cases and cases of successful political leaders ", you can also rewrite it as" There are sundry(or several) cases of successful politicians"which i surmise looks better.This was my word of advice.My apolgies..If , in case, you don't like that.