McGraw-Hill Education GRE 2019

Paragraph 2: First assumption: How important is customer service

to getting business? If people still give business despite bad customer

service, then new support staff won’t matter.

Paragraph 3: Second assumption: Could the loss in revenue have been

due to other factors? Was the economy bad? Did other parts of the

company decline during this time period?

Paragraph 4: Third assumption: What was the previous customer

support staff like? Were they better than the current ones? If so, would

new ones be as good as the old ones? If new hires are not as good as

the old staff, then hiring new personnel might not solve the problem.

Paragraph 5: Conclusion: Even though there’s a correlation b/w loss in

staff and revenue, it’s not obvious that the loss in staff led to the loss in

revenue. Need to address a lot of other factors before deciding that they

should hire more customer support staff.

Step 3: Write Your Body Paragraphs (5 Minutes per Paragraph)

In each body paragraph, you should examine a major assumption in the argument.

Start by introducing the assumption. Then state why the argument actually depends

on this assumption. Here is a writer’s paragraph 3 based on the preceding outline:

The author uses the correlation between the loss of revenue and decrease

in customer support during the same time period to conclude that the

business will benefit by hiring additional customer service employees.

However, the author commits a logical fallacy by equating correlation

and causation. The fact that the loss of revenue coincided with this

decrease in staff is not enough to conclude that the loss in revenue was

caused by the decrease in staff. Perhaps the economy was bad during

this time period, and the company lost revenues because its clientele

did not have as much disposable income. Or perhaps there were other

segments of the company that were underperforming during this time

period. Or perhaps one of its competitors had introduced a new product

or service that took away some of the company’s business. Because the

author leaves so many external variables unaddressed, it is not possible

to draw a firm causal connection between the data in the argument.

86 PART 2 ■ GRE ANALYTICAL WRITING AND VERBAL REASONING

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