#3 (permalink) Sun Sep 04, 2016 22:50 pm Re: Issue writing, characteristics of a city |
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Hi Duongandy, To be honest, I am not that familiar with this part of the GRE essay section. I will have to read up on it. To me it sounded well written though. You did have some problems with some of your preposition choices. Here are some more specific suggestions:
Duongandy wrote: | Hello Luschen, thank you for all the work you ve done. I am new to GRE, and I have just started practicing, I hope you can help me with this. To understand the characteristics of a society, one must study its major cities Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
The argument that to understand the most important characteristics of a country, one must [study] its major cities sounds very reasonable. Society throughout [human] history of human being have [has] been analyzed by the artifacts the society left behind including art, writing, household items, and clothing. Archaeologists have been able to extrapolate information about [a ]culture’s government, scientific knowledge, diet, and living conditions. When history began to be recorded in a systematic way, writers started [to] record about the major cities {you record something, you don't record about something, but it sounds a bit odd to record a city - maybe record facts about a city} in the world, and how those cities have influenced on the formation of a society. For most nations around the world, a well-developed city is the one that attracts most of [many] people {or "most of a nation's people"} and mainstream culture is mostly presented there. Throughout history, there ha[s ] been [evidence] that all great civilizations have had a flourishing {maybe add "capital" here} city; the government also wants to set up there to dictate the [establish] central power. [Therefore,] In order to understand most of people {it would be "most people", but I think it is better just to say "understand the people/citizenry"} in a society, to comprehend the way it is ruled, we must understand the major cities in that society. The most important characteristics of a society include the most distinguishing feature or quality that can give outsiders the strongest impression about the society. Given such [a ]definition, major cities are the ones that carry the most visible feature of any society. Most important characteristics means that life in rural areas can help illuminate [the society in some ways] at some point about the society, {you illuminate something, not illuminate at something} but not as much as the city since the city is where people tend to gather most for some [various] reasons such as higher employment, better social welfare, more access to education. Japan could be one of the convincing examples. When people think of Japan, they usually come up with the image of arduous office workers, [or] of the cute characters in anime. Obviously, one does not go to any rural areas to get such [an] image, but rather encounter[s ] those images in Tokyo Station or somewhere in Osaka city. While Japan [as well as] many other Asia[n ] nations have the strongest representation for the[ir] society in big cities, many nations may simply have such a huge [diversity in the] composition of their civilians that sometimes it is hard to summarize all [the] characteristics by looking at huge cities. The oppo[sing] side might cite one particular example [as] the United States[,] which is composed of fifty states and the civilians mostly are migrants [or descendants of migrants] from other continents. Therefore, to fully understand the characteristics of the American society, one should be ready to be overwhelmed by the various cultur[al] components of the fifty states. However, under the position {"position" isn't quite right - maybe "jurisdiction"? I'm not sure exactly what you mean} of the United States, there are metropolises such as New York, Los Angeles, all [of] which have different [ethnicities such as] African-American[s ], Hispanics, and Asian-American[s ] [living together] at the same time. It is so apropos that[ in the large urban areas] we can see one of the most important of American features as being a melting pot for different culture[s ]; which is just an example of the help of studying major cities when trying to understand a society. Of course, one sh[ould] not overlook the factor of cultur[al] root[s ] of any society if such [a ]factor is not so apparent in the major cities anymore. As we probably [well] know, many societies had agricultural background[s ] and sustain {"sustain" is unclear to me - do you mean they continue to be base on agriculture?} based on such background. It is likely that the society’s custom[s ],{no comma here} and rituals can only be understood in the context of rural areas. For example, [the traditional] wedding ceremony is well-known as such [a ]distinguishing feature that every nation has its own image. One foreigner might attend a wedding in China and think it is no differen[t ] from Western weddings, however, there might still existing some traditional wedding[s ] in China in which participants are required to wear specific clothes. Such [a ]custom is still a representative [of] China’s wedding traditions, and it is still prominent in small provinces of China. Nevertheless, even small cities can help us understand a society, especially if the custom tends to be different than that in the urban areas. {it was unclear to me exactly how this relates to the main topic of the prompt} All cities around the world represent a part of the country [to which] they belong to. {avoid ending sentences with prepositions} Major cities tend to carry the most obvious feature[s ] of the society [that inhabits] exists in them. Besides, major cities studying is a stretch,{"is a stretch" is unclear to me} in order to understand thoroughly [the] different facets of any society, one should not overlook the possibility that part of the society’s characteristics are [more commonly] reflected in the rural areas. |
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Luschen I'm a Communicator ;-)

Joined: 08 Apr 2011 Posts: 8541 Location: Nashville TN, USA
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