Appearance and society values--An GRE issue

Hi, everyone. I am from China, and this is the first time for me to put my essay here. Thanks for giving me some suggestion.

An GRE issue:

208"The way people look, dress, and act reveals their attitudes and interests. You can tell much about a society's ideas and values by observing the appearance and behavior of its people."

One must be inevitably influenced by society principles, society that he/she lives in. people were born to follow the belief and thoughts, which are developed by their ancestors. In a particular environment, someone who has different society ideas and values, might dresses himself/herself and behaves differently from others. These individuals sometimes would be seen as deviant and most likely be blamed or excluded by other regular ones. The instinct of human that pursuing approval from others make most of individuals in a particular society or history conform to the popular appearance and behavior rules which reflect the particular society's or history's ideas and values.

Therefore, the way people look, dress and act, to some extent, reveal their attitudes and interests about their neighbors, culture, society, etc. A lot of people in today's world, especially in developed countries, look and behave differently. Some of them may like wearing sports costumes ,while others enjoy putting on formal clothes; some like smoking cigarette, while others indulge themselves in natural and fresh air; some are busy climbing mountains, while others traveling on the sea. This reveals the society's tolerance to diversity of existence and people's freedom of pursuing their own life style. But in a different period or a particular country, this is not the case. For example, women in Iran should shelter their face from being seen by others, which reflects the society's belief and thoughts about women's rights.

However, appearance and behavior of a society, at times, are unable to tell its true face. As described in a very famous film--Dance with Wolf, during eighteenth century, when European colonists were busy working to explore new land in the middle of America, they have to fight with Indians who are original residents on the land. The while men saw the yellow ones as primitive people, because they enjoyed fighting with different tribes and always lived on butchering animals, which labeled them as kill-liker. But the truth is that while Indian were wearing poor clothes and lived on seemingly simple rude hunting life, they know how to live harmoniously with nature and animals and they also possess many better personalities, including warmhearted, loving peace, tolerant, respecting to other civilizations, than the white who think they are the more advanced race, but factually stole other people's home and oppressed them. So, only from the phenomena can not the whole story be told.

In some cases, appearance is most likely only to reveal one particular person's personality--his liked and disliked, not the society as a whole. Appearance and behavior always tell others who you are or want to be, because they are the outlets of your thoughts and belief. People become more and more judging others from their appearance, especially when they meet a person at the first time. So one might become more and more caring about their looks and pay more attention on how to give a good first-impression. Of course, their appearance and behavior follow their society ideas and values. But different people actually have different believes in many areas. So, it is hard to find out all their common believes only according to their costume and actions.

In one world, appearance and behavior can reflect a society's ideas and values to some extent, but difficult to reflect all aspects. To explore a particular society's mental soul need a more thoroughly investigation in kind of areas of the society, not simply through its people's exterior traits.

This doesn't really reveal anything about the attitudes and interests of Iranian women.


I am confused by this. What is this supposed to prove?

The prompt here is sort of confusing, as it starts off talking about what dress styles reveal about the individuals wearing them, then shifts to talking about what dress styles reveal about society in general. However, these are not necessarily the same thing. That woman wear veils in countries where not wearing them means harassment by the police does indeed say a lot about that society, but not necessarily about the women's own views. You therefore need to make it clear which half of the prompt you are dealing with in any given paragraph, and alert the reader when you are switching tacks, or else the essay will seem, as it currently does, a bit confused.

No, but it does -- as the writer states -- say something about the ruling culture's attitudes towards women's rights. However, the word that should have been used is "must" not "should." By saying "should," that author implied that she or he believes Iranian women ought to cover themselves.

But that is a minor point. This essay makes one good point by means of an example -- that it easy to misread a culture, as Europeans misread Native American culture -- but spends far too long on introductory comments (e.g., the comments about smoking and mountain climbing) and not enough time engaging the question in an intellectually sophisticated manner. This is the GRE, not a TOEFL or IELTS essay. The aim is to demonstrate the capacity to engage a question in a complex manner that demonstrates critical thinking and advanced learning.

There are intimations of such thought in this essay. I see the beginnings of the argument that this question cannot be answered simply because, while there is both internal and external pressure to conform, some people do not conform. At which people does one look, then, when trying to judge a culture by its clothing?

But this and other ideas are presented in a disorganized fashion and not developed sufficiently. So, I would recommend that you (a) think, and (b) outline before beginning to write. Think through all of the arguments you could make, decide which things you are going to say, and then organize them logically. When writing, keep your sentence structures simple, as you are still mastering English, and be especially careful with verb tenses.

Thanks to all of you and your comments help me a lot.

Thank you EF_Simone for so detailed information.

First I wanna say it's so amazing to meet a countrymen here. I am Chinese too.
I'd like to say that you should make you essay more "complete". Because our thinking habits is kind of...um..you know...jumpy, we often omits the important steps to say. The women in Iran is a good example. You want to say their culture attitudes. However, you need to explain that. A sentence "should shelter their face" is not gonna work. This is my personal view.

Go! tsp8487

I think we have quite a few forum members from China. Perhaps one of you could start a new thread under "student talk" to discuss the unique challenges you face in shifting to English.

Thank you, Superkid. I agree with you that sometime, our thinking pattern is somewhat different from others. Worse more, I am such person that often labeled as skip-thinker. Although I am trying my best to deal with this problem, it is still tough for me to completely overcome it.

Communication is one of the most important tools for us to eliminate misunderstandings when we chat with people from other countries. Also, communication is an effective way to share our outcomes with different culture. So, communicating with people holding different language is very important. Thereby, we need to sharp our foreign language skill especially English and that is why people like us come here. However, I think we also have the responsibility to benefit our foreign friends. So, welcome more friends from different area around the world to learn Chinese, and if anyone interested in China or Chinese, I wish that I can give you some help. My Email: tsp8487@gmail.com.

Simone's suggestion is good. And I wish that one day we, the new students in this forum, become somebody like Simone to help more future new students improve their English skill. "Student talk" sounds good. Now, I can take this task. However, welcome Simone and all other warmhearted friends to give some suggestion.

Tell us what you mean by that. I'm also curious about your insights on differences in thinking patterns.