The following appeared in a health newsletter.
"A ten-year nationwide study of the effectiveness of wearing a helmet while bicycling indicates that ten years ago, approximately 35 percent of all bicyclists reported wearing helmets, whereas today that number is nearly 80 percent. Another study, however, suggests that during the same ten-year period, the number of bicycle-related accidents has increased 200 percent. These results demonstrate that bicyclists feel safer because they are wearing helmets, and they take more risks as a result. Thus, to reduce the number of serious injuries from bicycle accidents, the government should concentrate more on educating people about bicycle safety and less on encouraging or requiring bicyclists to wear helmets."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The above argument is about increasing bicycle-related accidents in a country and the author of the letter related it to increase of using helmets among bicycle riders, because when they wear it they take more risks. Being accurate on the argument reveals that the author concluded, superficially, and fails to consider some important assumptions that can made the argument more cogent.
The first point is that, there is no statistic about the relative number of accidents to population. If population experienced an increasing trend during 10 years ago, consequently, the number of whole accidents and also bicycle-related accidents may have increased and it is regardless of wearing helmet. Larger populatiom has higher accidents , too.
The other assumption is increasing trend in popularity of bicycling. It can be considered that people due to various reason such as traffic or air pollution prefer to use bicycle rather than other vehicels and so number of bicycle-riders has increased which can lead to higher number of accidents.
Also, the author should consider changes in condition and facilities that might happen during last 10 years. For example,now there is not enough special bicycle roads that can meet new rider population requirements. Also,maybe the roads would not be modified and reconstructed in 10 years period and so have lower quality than 10 years ago that can pose higher risk of accident to bicycle-riders.
Also, there is no reasonable evidence relates taking risk and wearing helmet. It is possible that people driving behaviour changed as a result of other problems like heavy traffic jams or changes in transformation infrastructures or not strict rules that cause people ride carelessly. And, it does not mean that wearing helmet cause such phenomena.
As, coclusion, it is obvious that author could not present any cogent correlation between higher accident events and wearing helmet and his argument seems fallacious which could be corroborate by considering all possibilities.
Sentence: Being accurate on the argument reveals that the author concluded, superficially, and fails to consider some important assumptions that can made the argument more cogent.
Description: A modal auxillary is not usually followed by a verb, past participle
Suggestion: Refer to can and made
Sentence: Larger populatiom has higher accidents , too.
Error: populatiom Suggestion: population
Sentence: It can be considered that people due to various reason such as traffic or air pollution prefer to use bicycle rather than other vehicels and so number of bicycle-riders has increased which can lead to higher number of accidents.
Error: vehicels Suggestion: vehicles
Sentence: As, coclusion, it is obvious that author could not present any cogent correlation between higher accident events and wearing helmet and his argument seems fallacious which could be corroborate by considering all possibilities.
Error: coclusion Suggestion: conclusion
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argument 1 and argument 2 -- OK, but can be put in one argument
argument 3 -- OK
argument 4 -- OK
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flaws:
Always remember Need to argue against the conclusion:
'Thus, to reduce the number of serious injuries from bicycle accidents, the government should concentrate more on educating people about bicycle safety and less on encouraging or requiring bicyclists to wear helmets.'
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 1 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 317 350
No. of Characters: 1666 1500
No. of Different Words: 173 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.22 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.256 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.932 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 127 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 90 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 64 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 48 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.643 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.587 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.571 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.339 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.666 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.062 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5