GRE Argument 范文 Topic 4

　　"Of the two leading real estate firms in our town---Adams Realty and Fitch Realty---Adams is clearly superior. Adams has 40 real estate agents. In contrast, Fitch has 25, many of whom work only part-time. Moreover, Adams' revenue last year was twice as high as that of Fitch, and included home sales that averaged $168,000, compared to Fitch's $144,000. Homes listed with Adams sell faster as well: ten years ago, I listed my home with Fitch and it took more than four months to sell; last year, when I sold another home, I listed it with Adams, and it took only one month. Thus, if you want to sell your home quickly and at a good price, you should use Adams."

　　The author argues that Adams Realty is superior to Fitch Realty. To support this claim the author cites statistics about the number and working hours of agents, and the number and sales prices of homes sold by the two farms. Further, the author cites anecdotal evidence involving personal experience with Fitch and Adams. A careful analysis reveals that this evidence it lends little credible support for argument.

　　The Claim is partially based on the fact that Adams has more agents than Fitch and that many of Fitch's agents work only part-time. There is no correlation between the number of employees, their working hours and the quality of their work. Without such a link, we could consider the possibility that a smaller firm could be more effective than a larger one and, likewise, that a part-time agent could be more effective than a full-time agent. Besides, the author does not provide any information about the specific number of Adams agents who work part-time.

　　The claim is also supported by the fact that Adams sold more properties than Fitch last year. One year of sales records is an insufficient sample. It is possible that in most other years Adams could have sold fewer properties than Fitch. Moreover, the disparity in sales volume could be explained by factors other than the comparative quality of the two firms. For example, perhaps Adams serves a denser geographic area or in an area where turnover in home-ownership is higher for reasons unrelated to Adams' effectiveness. It is even possible that the only reason sales volume is higher at Adams is because the company employs more agents but, perhaps, each Adams agent sells fewer homes on average than each Fitch agent does. Without ruling out such alternative explanations for the disparity in sales volume, the author cannot defend the conclusion based on such scant evidence.

　　Support for the claim is also drawn from the average sales price of homes. This evidence only illustrates that the homes that Adams sells are more valuable on average than the ones that Fitch sells, not that Adams is more effective in selling homes than Fitch. Moreover, it is possible that a few relatively high-priced or low-priced properties skewed these averages, rendering any conclusions about the comparative quality of the two firms based on these averages irrelevant.

　　The author of the argument indicates that Fitch Realty took a considerably longer time to sell one of the author's homes than it took Adams Realty to sell another one of her homes ten years earlier. However, this disparity can be explained by other plausible factor, for example, changing economic conditions during that ten-year period or a difference in the desirability of the two properties. Without establishing that all other factors affecting the speed of a sale were essentially the same for the two homes, the author should not expect an audience to make a decision on this limited anecdotal evidence.

　　In conclusion, the claim is not a persuasive one. In order to convince an analytical reader, the author needs to provide clear evidence that individual Adams agents are more effective in selling homes than individual Fitch agents, and that the disparity in home sales and sales price is attributable to that difference. Also, to better evaluate the author's claim the author needs to provide more information comparing the percentage of agents working part-time at Fitch versus Adams. Finally, the author needs to provide more information about the comparative attractiveness of the author's two homes, and the extent to which the residential real-estate market changed during the decade between the sales of these two homes.