First, I'll just outline the recommendation and the arguements they make (which can help make a very clear Body Paragraph 2/3/4.

Recommendation: GO TO OUR SCHOOL if you want to go to a dance school.
Argument: - we are the most intensive IN ELMTOWN.
- The teachers were at one time good dancers, thus are good teachers.
- Some students that went here have gone on to be professionals.

The first paragraph can talk in general about why the argument is flawed. This is probably the easiest part of the whole essay because you can create a very simple template you stick to regardless of what the actualy prompt is. Here is the sample essay for arguement the ETS posts:

"While it may be true that the Mason City government ought to devote more money to riverside recreational facilities, this author's argument does not make a cogent case for increased resources based on river use. It is easy to understand why city residents would want a cleaner river, but this argument is rife with holes and assumptions, and thus, not strong enough to lead to increased funding."

So how would you make this your template? Simple.

Sentence 1 will say "The arguement is possible, but ultimately flawed" in your own words making sure to actually write out the arguement (but not needing to write out why the arguement is flawed). Doing this for your prompt would lead to something like "The claim that Pirouettes's ballet school is the clear choice for any prospective dance student, is not cooberated by the supposed facts enumerated by the school." Looking at your sentence, this works fine, though it could be spruced up a little.

Sentence 2 will reiterate, in general terms (or specific if you wish, listing off the 3 body paragraph's ideas), why the claim isn't necessarily proven by the information given. "While Pirouettes Ballet School may be the best option for most or maybe even all students looking for a dance school, their arguments are pocked with assumptions and misconceptions that vitiate the claim." Looking at your sentence, you try to this this here, only your actual sentence is quite poor in a "I'm trying to quickly write an essay" sort of way. Instead of cold starting the sentence with "it" try adding something to lead the reader from the first sentence into the second. "While" is a good word here as are "although" and "despite." "DOES PROVIDE FEW EVIDENCES" is improper grammar and should be simply written as "provides evidence" or "provides some evidence." This would also be a solid place to throw in a GRE word like "modicum" or "minute." A good way to re-write this sentence of yours would be as follows: "While the school provides a modicum of evidence to support it's claim, this evidence is based on generalizations and isn't detailed enough to support Pirouettes Ballet School being the clear choice." In my opinion, you should actively try to throw between 3-6 GRE level words into your paper, and the sooner you do so the sooner you don't have to think about it. Since the first paragraph is based on a pretty rigid template, it is also much easier to have words in your mind pre-selected for this purpose. Words that you know will deal with how clear the promp is like COGENT or words like MINUTE, MODICUM, or PLETHORA that deal with amounts (as the arguement essay will always allow you to say somewhere in this first paragraph that the argument isn't clear enough or comprehensive enough due to too much or too little of something). Anyway, your second sentence, while in the right direction for content, needs some work.

A Third sentence will basically do the same thing as the second, and isn't necessary beyond letting you pad your word count or to better explain something (for certain prompts). For this prompt it is not necessary. If you did write something, it would be to enumerate the ideas you will be talking about in the following body paragraphs. A sentence such as "In particular, the school fails to properly EXPOUND (another chance to throw in a very template oriented GRE word) upon why it believes it has the most intensive programs, why a teacher being a good dancer would make them a good teacher, or ____ (I'm leaving this blank for a reason I'll explain when talking about the 3rd paragraph)." Again, this sentence is a padding sentence more than anything though. Its okay that you don't have it in your essay here.




So, now we go to the body paragraphs.

First body (para 2):

Firstly, while not incorrect, can be seen as incorrect by some reviewers. It is safer to use "first, second, third" or an entirely different transition entirely (my recommendation). "To start"would be a good example of an alternative. This is okay, just pointing out that not using "firstly" is safer than using it. On top of which, numbering down firstly, secondly, thirdly or enumerating at all when not dealing with something where listing is part of the actual argument feels very elementary. That said, we'll move on as these aren't things that would LIKELY lose you points.

Your first sentence needs "while" as in "firstly, while the school claims." Next, the arguement doesn't claim, the school claims. You also need to, at the end of this sentence, say that the school doesn't explain or elucidate as to why it is intensive, not that they don't highlight why. Highlight isn't really the right word here, although it is possible a reviewer might pass over it since I'm sure most understood what you meant. Highlight means emphasis wasn't put on while the actual argument fails to give a reason why at all, not merely not emphasis why. Semantics? A little, but not on a test of the english language.

Your next two sentences seem to go off the rail a little bit. "Exactly what aspects of their program make them the best dance school in Elmtown. So their argument needs to elaborate more on the intensive program it follows or if it has been certified to be one by any proclaimed dance institute or organization." These two sentences lead me to believe that you are not a native english speaker or you just got confused while writing. You need the first of these two sentences to be something like "There is no mention of why or how the school is the best in Elmtown." It should then be followed by more details on this statement: "There is no verification of this claim from an outside entity, leading the reader to believe that the claim is merely self-proclaimed."

In short, this whole paragraph seems to have the general idea of what it WANTS to say, but doesn't know how to put it together into a cogent paragraph. Based solely on this paragraph I feel you'd be looking at somewhere between a 2.5-3.0, as you can understand it, but it feels like words and phrases are wholesale missing at times and the grammar is off when it doesn't feel words are missing. My hope is that the errors are simply because you didn't take time to go back and proofread and less so that you lack the ability, either way you can certainly do better by being more careful and giving the paper a read through at the end when possible.


Body 2 (paragraph 3):

I'm starting to get the general idea that you don't know how to make your sentences flow all that well. Each sentence seems to be very terse and tight, which might be nice for writing an instruction manual for how to remove your hard drive, but not so much in long form writing such as an essay. "Those few teachers or students might be much more talented and exceptional. So the claim needs to elaborate more in general about the ratio of teachers and students from their institute who have brought fame to the dance school." This, for example, is not very well written and seems to be a seperate idea than what you were mentioning the sentence prior (making it seem disjointed). It needs to be something more akin to "Although the school states that some of it's teachers are from well respected dance programs, the actual distribution of these valuable teachers is not detailed by the school. The reader needs to know exactly how many of their teachers fall under this category of exceptional teachers as well as the student to teacher ratios in order to obtain a fair understanding of how valuable these teachers would be for the program.

Now I want to mention that you put the students being exceptional and the teachers being exceptional into the same paragraph which, if your third paragraph is any indication, is a mistake. You can easily make each of them their own body paragraph with the second paragraph talking about how you would need to know how many students these "top teachers" can actually affect as well talking about how the claim that a "teacher who was a good dancer from a good dance studio and thus they must be a good teacher" isn't necessary properly deduced syllogism. Just because they were a good dancer doesn't doesn't mean they would be a good teacher...did they win award FOR BEING A TEACHER? Were they rated highly ONLY AS A PERFORMER? This is all information that you could talk about. The third body paragraph could then go on and talk about the fact that the school's claim that their students go on to be performers in well known productions lacks numerical detail. "Many" is not a empirical value and could mean as few as 3 students out of 5000 or as many as 95% of their students.


Third body (4th para):


As i mentioned, earlier the whole premise of this paragraph is flawed, as unless you change the first paragraph this is effective the same argument being made there. The first sentence is (not to be rude) but particularly bad as it actually states the ENTIRE CLAIM. If you cut away the first sentence you wrote, you'll get what your ACTUAL first sentence for your idea here should be, only I think it is too similar to the first. Given that the prompt very clearly gives you a 1, 2, 3 to what the school can be called out on, i think it would behoove you to have tried to use those specifically. While its okay not to, you can run into problems like you have here where what in the moment feels like two seperate arguements to you is actually the same arguement slightly reworded.


GENERAL BODY PARAGRAPH ISSUES:

Your body paragraphs in general need to follow a flow where it states the arguement your are impugning, gives two or three details on why you think there is a problem, and then tie up the idea with a stronger comment. For a general idea of what a strong body paragraph would look like, I"m going to post the body paragraph that followed from the introduction (from the 6 scored writing from the official ETS sight):

Citing surveys of city residents, the author reports city resident's love of water sports. It is not clear, however, the scope and validity of that survey. For example, the survey could have asked residents if they prefer using the river for water sports or would like to see a hydroelectric dam built, which may have swayed residents toward river sports. The sample may not have been representative of city residents, asking only those residents who live upon the river. The survey may have been 10 pages long, with 2 questions dedicated to river sports. We just do not know. Unless the survey is fully representative, valid, and reliable, it can not be used to effectively back the author's argument.

Additionally, the author implies that residents do not use the river for swimming, boating, and fishing, despite their professed interest, because the water is polluted and smelly. While a polluted, smelly river would likely cut down on river sports, a concrete connection between the resident's lack of river use and the river's current state is not effectively made. Though there have been complaints, we do not know if there have been numerous complaints from a wide range of people, or perhaps from one or two individuals who made numerous complaints. To strengthen his/her argument, the author would benefit from implementing a normed survey asking a wide range of residents why they do not currently use the river.

Building upon the implication that residents do not use the river due to the quality of the river's water and the smell, the author suggests that a river clean up will result in increased river usage. If the river's water quality and smell result from problems which can be cleaned, this may be true. For example, if the decreased water quality and aroma is caused by pollution by factories along the river, this conceivably could be remedied. But if the quality and aroma results from the natural mineral deposits in the water or surrounding rock, this may not be true. There are some bodies of water which emit a strong smell of sulphur due to the geography of the area. This is not something likely to be afffected by a clean-up. Consequently, a river clean up may have no impact upon river usage. Regardless of whether the river's quality is able to be improved or not, the author does not effectively show a connection between water quality and river usage.


Conclusion:

Your conclusion for the argument essay should make it clear that you understand that, while POSSIBLE, it's not that the author is WRONG, but rather that they don't give you the details necessary to show that they are right. This can be very template-based, much like the introductory paragraph, in that you can have 2-3 sentence where the first basically says "there is logic to the argument" the second says "It is even possible that the claim is true and/or it might be the right choice" the third says "but there isn't enough to the argument at this time to prove the claim is right. I'll post the conclusion from prior 6 rating ETS now:

A clean, beautiful, safe river often adds to a city's property values, leads to increased tourism and revenue from those who come to take advantage of the river, and a better overall quality of life for residents. For these reasons, city government may decide to invest in improving riverside recreational facilities. However, this author's argument is not likely significantly persuade the city goverment to allocate increased funding..

Your conclusion, for starters, shouldn't start with "in conclusion." While it is techincally a transition, its a very tacky one and should be avoided for this essay. Whenever you want to write "in conclusion," just remove it and


Now, for the overall review of the essay...i'll start by linking you to the ETS page: https://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general ... _responses

Looking at that, which of the responses reminds you the most of your own essay? At a glance, I believe it would lay somewhere between 2 and 3, MAYBE a 3.5, but certainly not a 4 (note: they don't actually due .5s, you only get a .5 because the score isthe average between the two essays). My best guess would be to put it at a 3 since i believe reviewers generally tend to avoid giving particularly low scores (1-2) unless they are REALLY bad and particularly good scores (6) unless they are VERY well written. The second/fourth paragraph's problems and some of the short sentences make getting a 4 outside of reach for this essay.