GRE Sample Issue Task
Below is a sample GRE Issue Task essay I wrote for reference to those preparing for GRE Analytical Writing Assessments and want an illustration of how an Issue Task is written.
Prompt: “Science and technology will one day be able to solve all of society’s problems”
Write a response to the prompt in which you discuss whether or not you agree or disagree. Be certain to fully develop your position and carefully consider ways in which your position could be challenged.
The Answer :
There’s a famous saying that “Past is the key to understand the problems of the present”. In fact, if we go through history we can find many well-known leaders who had referenced the past in order to solve their prevailing social problems. The prompt asserts that comprehending the past serves no useful purpose to the current leaders of the world. In my opinion, I mostly disagree with this assertion and argue that understanding the past at times is useful mainly for two reasons.
To begin, studying the past can help the current leaders in structuring the most viable decisions to resolve a problem by learning from the mistakes or taking inspiration from the decisions taken in the past. For instance, Martin Luther King Jr. the leader of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S.A in the 1950s, his actions were inspired by the Civil Disobedience Movement led by Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa. The Civil Rights Movement helped abolish racism and apartheid against the black people in the U.S.A. Another example is the use of nuclear weapons for war, history has shown us that nuclear weapons always have brought mass destruction, loss of innumerable lives, and suffering, therefore, the leaders of today’s democracies refrain from using nuclear weapons for war at any cost and instead use the method of negotiation. The above examples show us that referring the past can be so useful in preventing bad things to happen. Therefore it will also not be an exaggeration to say that the experience of the European and the Middle-East governments in tackling the SARS Virus in 2003 is helping many governments around the world in tackling the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Further, one can look at the past economic and cultural trends to make predictions in today’s world. Making predictions about the economy is not that easy until one is provided with the insights of the economic trends in the past. For instance, consider a hypothetical company X, for the past 5 years its profit margin has not shown any rise despite investing in every department of the company. The company’s owner can study the economic trend of his company, by looking at which services of his company have been the most popular amongst the consumers and which service isn’t generating the revenue. He can either stop investing in the services that are not generating enough revenue and instead use it on improving the popular services or he can assess problems in his not so successful services again by studying the past mistakes and correct them whichever one is more viable. That way the owner of the company can devise a proper plan to improve its financial condition from what it is in the present by studying the company’s past economic trends.
Although from the above two reasons it is quite evident that comprehending the past is very useful, however, it is not the only thing a leader should consider while shaping his decisions. There’s no doubt in the fact that studying the past will provide those in current positions of leadership with insights to formulate their decisions in the present however at times it isn’t necessary that what worked in the past will work in the present also for an obvious reason that the conditions of the past and the present might not be similar. In that case, the leaders might also have to use their intuition in the decision-making process. For instance, Facebook, when it was invented, there were only a few social media websites but in time many social media websites sprung up, for example, Orkut but not many survived because as mobile technology improved the demand for mobile-friendliness of these social media websites increased and no one wanted to open a computer to use social media and Mark Zuckerberg knew that and so he took the early decision to extend access to Facebook to a mobile application also and we can see where it is now. Had it been like other companies just increasing the features and not increasing the user-friendliness and mobile compatibility companies like Snapchat might have overtaken the global business of social media.
So to say that understanding the past serves no useful purpose to those in current positions of leadership is a slight exaggeration. Definitely a leader should comprehend the past while devising a decision or a plan but it shouldn’t be the only aspect a leader should consider. However, the past will always be an important source of learning and inspiration for the current leaders.
