Evidence suggests that academic honor codes, which call for students to agree not to cheat in their academic endeavors and to notify a faculty member if they suspect that others have cheated, are far more successful than are other methods at deterring che

Essay topics:

Evidence suggests that academic honor codes, which call for students to agree not to cheat in their academic endeavors and to notify a faculty member if they suspect that others have cheated, are far more successful than are other methods at deterring cheating among students at colleges and universities. Several years ago, Groveton College adopted such a code and discontinued its old-fashioned system in which teachers closely monitored students. Under the old system, teachers reported an average of thirty cases of cheating per year. In the first year the honor code was in place, students reported twenty-one cases of cheating; five years later, this figure had dropped to fourteen. Moreover, in a recent survey, a majority of Groveton students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without.

Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.

The given passage concerns the problem of students' cheating. It compares two methods of revealing the cheating. According to the presented facts, a new system, which is called the honor code is much more effective than the previous one - close monitoring by teachers. Probably, it could be reasonable and true that the new system is effective. However, the presented facts may lead to another conclusion than it states the text. So, in order to be sure about the passage conclusion, it will be wise reconsider the facts and try to find plausible explanations.

The first main point of the given passage is data of numbers of cheating among students. At the first sight, it might seem that the logic of the conclusion is perfect and clear, however, the given statistic data could be considered in another way. For example, the drop of cheating numbers might easily state that the new system has problems in its methods of counting. Or put it another, a lot of students merely do not notify their teachers about cases of cheating. It could be quite plausible, because students are young people who care about their social status and how they are perceieved by others. However, considering the new honor code, it is easy to propose that a lot of students disregard cases of cheating. They do not want to let down their peers and spoil their social position. There is no doubt that a student who would inform a teacher about a cheating case, certainly spoiled relationship with his/her peer. Hence, the given fact should be revised.

The second point of the passage is the survey, which indicates that the honor code provokes them do not cheat. In this case, it was not necessary to conduct the survey, because students will always answer this way. They will not be honest in such things, and of course, they answer yes that honor code provokes them do not cheat. Obviously, the survey indicates anything. However, it is only one probable explanation of the given fact.

To sum up, the presented facts could be interpreted in different ways, hence, they could not be the solid base to conclude that the honor code is much more effective system than previous one. In this regard, all facts should be analyzed properly, in order to find the truth, but the given passage does not reveal the actual situation at all.

Votes
Average: 3.7 (3 votes)
Essay Categories

Comments

Discourse Markers used:
['but', 'first', 'hence', 'however', 'if', 'may', 'second', 'so', 'for example', 'no doubt', 'of course', 'to sum up']

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.208425720621 0.25644967241 81% => OK
Verbs: 0.177383592018 0.15541462614 114% => OK
Adjectives: 0.079822616408 0.0836205057962 95% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0576496674058 0.0520304965353 111% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0487804878049 0.0272364105082 179% => Less pronouns wanted. Try not to use 'you, I, they, he...' as the subject of a sentence
Prepositions: 0.10199556541 0.125424944231 81% => OK
Participles: 0.0487804878049 0.0416121511921 117% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.46166102459 2.79052419416 88% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0221729490022 0.026700313972 83% => OK
Particles: 0.00443458980044 0.001811407834 245% => OK
Determiners: 0.110864745011 0.113004496875 98% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0310421286031 0.0255425247493 122% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0133037694013 0.0127820249294 104% => OK

Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2320.0 2731.13054187 85% => OK
No of words: 400.0 446.07635468 90% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.8 6.12365571057 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.472135955 4.57801047555 98% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.32 0.378187486979 85% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.2425 0.287650121315 84% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.1725 0.208842608468 83% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.1075 0.135150697306 80% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.46166102459 2.79052419416 88% => OK
Unique words: 191.0 207.018472906 92% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.4775 0.469332199767 102% => OK
Word variations: 51.501077945 52.1807786196 99% => OK
How many sentences: 22.0 20.039408867 110% => OK
Sentence length: 18.1818181818 23.2022227129 78% => OK
Sentence length SD: 40.1190377512 57.7814097925 69% => OK
Chars per sentence: 105.454545455 141.986410481 74% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.1818181818 23.2022227129 78% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.545454545455 0.724660767414 75% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.14285714286 78% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 3.58251231527 0% => OK
Readability: 42.4318181818 51.9672348444 82% => OK
Elegance: 1.265625 1.8405768891 69% => OK

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.179231137813 0.441005458295 41% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.111009731915 0.135418324435 82% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0852750573171 0.0829849096947 103% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.503912395508 0.58762219726 86% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.156173176417 0.147661913831 106% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0757468521769 0.193483328276 39% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0533910991557 0.0970749176394 55% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.455711561199 0.42659136922 107% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0535010631158 0.0774707102158 69% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.141804501195 0.312017818177 45% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0167357974154 0.0698173142475 24% => The ideas may be duplicated in paragraphs.

Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.33743842365 120% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.87684729064 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.82512315271 104% => OK
Positive topic words: 8.0 6.46551724138 124% => OK
Negative topic words: 5.0 5.36822660099 93% => OK
Neutral topic words: 5.0 2.82389162562 177% => OK
Total topic words: 18.0 14.657635468 123% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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Note: This is not the final score. The e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.

Sentence: It could be quite plausible, because students are young people who care about their social status and how they are perceieved by others.
Error: perceieved Suggestion: perceived

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argument 1 -- not OK. //maybe other reasons caused the decline of cases of cheating. For example, the school got better source of students.

argument 2 -- not OK. //In GRE/GMAT, we have to accept all data or evidence are true. It is important to find out loopholes behind surveys or studies. Loopholes mean that we accept all surveys told are true, but there are some conditions applied, for example:

It works for time A (10 years ago), but it doesn't mean it works for time B (nowadays).

It works for location A (a city, community, nation), but it doesn't mean it works for location B (another city, community, nation).

It works for people A (a manager), but it doesn't mean it works for people B (a worker).

It works for event A (one event, project... ), but it doesn't mean it works for event B (another event, project...).

It works for A and B, but not C.

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Here we accept that a majority of Groveton students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code, but how about teachers closely monitored students? maybe even more students said that they would be less likely to cheat.

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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 400 350
No. of Characters: 1853 1500
No. of Different Words: 185 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.472 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.632 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.353 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 119 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 89 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 62 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 32 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.182 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.352 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.591 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.3 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.464 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.077 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5

Thank you very much for the assistance.

Could you be so kind clafiry one moment. In this task "Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument." I should have investigate an alternative explanation like you has told me "Here we accept that a majority of Groveton students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code, but how about teachers closely monitored students? maybe even more students said that they would be less likely to cheat."?
So, this task is quite different from other argument tasks? Only one alternative explanation will be enough to score?

Thanks in advance.

When the question is 'discuss one or more alternative explanations...', it means it is a new GRE topic which is different to traditional arguments. In traditional arguments, we are asked to look for flaws, while, in this type of question, there are no flaws, and we just need to give other explanations like:'One alternative explanation is that...', 'Another alternative explanation is that...'

Still we need to give three or four explanations, but expressions are a little bit different to traditional argument essays.