Раздел аналитических эссе (Analytical Writing Assessment)

Первый раздел тестирования – Analytical Writing Assessment – включает два типа заданий, связанных с написанием аналитических эссе.

Анализ проблем (Analysis of an Issue)

В первом задании – Analysis of an Issue – предъявляется отрывок текста, в котором излагается тема для обсуждения. Ваша задача – принять одну из точек зрения и аргументировать ее, снабжая свои утверждения соответствующими доводами и иллюстрациями.

Постановка проблемы:

In many countries, including the USA, the postal service is a quasi-governmental organization whose primary mission is to deliver mail to individuals within the borders of the country. Since, it is argued, mail delivery to rural addresses where the population is sparse cannot be done economically under any acceptable circumstance; the postal service is given a monopoly on mail delivery. Actually, however, mail delivery could be done economically by private corporations as long as each corporation were given a monopoly to service any given area where sparsely populated areas were balanced against densely populated areas.

Задание:

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations or reading.

Эссе:

The idea that the post office department can be privatized is based on two questionable assumptions. In the first place, it can be shown that population in the USA is not distributed so that postal market areas can be divided with the result that costly market areas are balanced against lucrative market areas. In the second place, it can be shown that private corporations are not necessarily more cost effective than quasi-governmental organizations. It is, therefore, most likely that privatization of the post office department cannot be accomplished.

In the first place, due to mechanization, one worker on the farm can support at least three hundred people living in the city. Large combines with relatively small crews can roll across the prairies harvesting 500 ton of wheat in a day, enough to feed hundreds of people for a year.

As a result, there has been less and less employment in rural areas and, as a further result, people have left the rural areas for life in the city, creating the contemporary dilemma for postal planners. It is easy to distribute tons of mail to big city dwellers in high rise buildings at a reasonable cost. But who is going to find a cost effective way to deliver a single first class letter twenty miles down a country road in a snowstorm in January? Therefore, postal markets cannot be distributed so that service to any given market is economical using contiguous geographical markets.

Perhaps the answer lies in distributing the cost of mail delivery by balancing a cost intensive market area such as rural up-state New York with a lucrative market area such as New York City. On examination, however, this turns out to be an impossibility because population simply is not distributed in neatly balanced areas for reasons noted in the preceding paragraph.

Albany, New York, probably has a greater population than the entire state of Wyoming. Is a single company going to be given Wyoming and Albany as a single market area? If so, that company will not be able to service the area economically because the costs of doing business over such a long distance are extremely high. The current post office department, in effect, already does this and it has found it to be not economical. Clearly, it is also true that postal markets cannot be distributed using noncontiguous geographical markets, so that service to any given market is economical.

Furthermore, not all private corporations are economical. The federal government has always subsidized defense contractors rewarding them for their inefficiencies with huge cost over-runs. Besides this, any number of large private  corporations have gone bankrupt including Continental Airlines and Pan American Airways.

Would any social planners want postal delivery discontinued to any area because a large, privatized postal company declared bankruptcy?

The argument that the post office department can be privatized is based on two questionable assumptions. It is therefore most likely that this argument is invalid (1) because populations are not distributed in such a way that large, regional post offices could be run economically, and (2) because private corporations are not necessarily cost efficient and economical.

For these reasons, privatization does not appear to be an effective means of reforming our postal system.

Analysis of an Argument

Во втором задании первого раздела – Analysis of an Argument – необходимо критически проанализировать аргументы, приведенные в отрывке текста. Нужно указать на слабые стороны рассуждения и предложить свой, более удачный вариант аргументации. Приводим пример стандартного вопроса из этого раздела.