导读:聚培训GRE栏目的小编给大家带来“GRE Argument50写作题目附范文赏析”,以下是详细内容,希望对同学们备考GRE有所帮助!新GRE Argument50写作题目An ancient, traditional remedy for insomnia—the scent of lavender flowers—has now been proved effective. In a recent study, 30 volunteers with chronic insomnia slept each night for
聚培训GRE栏目的小编给大家带来“GRE Argument50写作题目附范文赏析”,以下是详细内容,希望对同学们备考GRE有所帮助!
新GRE Argument50写作题目
An ancient, traditional remedy for insomnia—the scent of lavender flowers—has now been proved effective. In a recent study, 30 volunteers with chronic insomnia slept each night for three weeks on lavender-scented pillows in a controlled room where their sleep was monitored electronically. During the first week, volunteers continued to take their usual sleeping medication. They slept soundly but wakened feeling tired. At the beginning of the second week, the volunteers discontinued their sleeping medication. During that week, they slept less soundly than the previous week and felt even more tired. During the third week, the volunteers slept longer and more soundly than in the previous two weeks. Therefore, the study proves that lavender cures insomnia within a short period of time.
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
新GRE Argument50写作范文
The speaker concludes that lavender provides an effective cure for insomnia. To support this conclusion the speaker cites a three-week experiment in which researchers monitored a controlled group. The speaker's account of the experiment reveals several critical problems.
To begin with, the fact that subjects slept more soundly and awakened less tired the first week than the second demonstrates only that the subjects' sleep medications were somewhat effective yet it proves nothing about the effectiveness of lavender.
Another problem involves the speaker's account of the experiment's third week, during which the speaker reports only that the subjects slept longer and more soundly than in the previous two weeks. There are other factors that could have contributed to the third week's results. Perhaps the subjects were simply making up for sleep they lost the previous week when they discontinued their regular medication. In short, without ruling out other explanations for the third week's results, the speaker cannot confidently identify what caused the subjects to sleep longer and more soundly that week.
Two final problems with the argument involve the experimental process. The experiment's results are reliable only if all other factors that might affect sleep patterns remained constant during the three-week period, and if the number of experimental subjects is statistically significant. Without a clearer understanding of the experiment's methodology, one should likely not base any conclusion on such results.
As it stands, the argument is not persuasive. To strengthen the assertion that lavender-scented pillows provide a solution for insomniacs the author must provide evidence that the test subjects' insomnia was worse just prior to the experiment than at the conclusion of the experiment, and that the number of subjects is statistically sufficient to warrant the conclusion. To better assess the argument, the audience should be provided with more information about the nature of the study.