The following appeared as part of an editorial in the Waymarsh city newspaper:“Last year the parents of first graders in our school district expressed satisfaction with the reading skills their children developed but complained strongly about their childr

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The following appeared as part of an editorial in the Waymarsh city newspaper:

“Last year the parents of first graders in our school district expressed satisfaction with the reading skills their children developed but complained strongly about their children’s math skills. To remedy this serious problem and improve our district’s elementary education, everyone in the teacher-training program at Waymarsh University should be required to take more courses in mathematics.”

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion, be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion. (used with permission from mba.com)

The argument suggests that Waymarsh University students, who will be teachers in the future, should take more mathematics classes in order to strengthen the first grader-children's math skills in the district. The argument approaches to the problem based on the parent-complains of first-grade children's weak math skills compared to their reading skills. This alone does not constitute a logical argument in favor of the children's math skills in the district, and it certainly does not prove the main argument.

The argument does not provide any explanation to the cause of the problem of children's weak math skills. It assumes that the children's weak math skills in the district is caused by teachers' math skills which does not provide a strong relationship. The problem may be caused because of the school program in the district. If the reason that the children do not have good math skills is the weekly hours of the math courses which may be less than that of reading courses, then the argument cannot be supported by future teachers' having more math courses at college.

Another issue is that the argument assumes that the students who study at Waymarch University will be the future teachers in the district that has this problem. What if the WU students are hired in other districts and do not work in the district. Then, the problem is still not solved even if the causation that the argument provided is right.

If the argument included the arguments such as what caused the children's weak math skills in the district or what if the future teachers of the districts trained differently not the students at a random university. If such arguments are discussed, then the argument above would have been more thorough and convincing.

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Average: 6.5 (2 votes)
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flaws:
No. of Words: 291 350
No. of Different Words: 121 200

Write the essay with more vocabulary words.

Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 12 15
No. of Words: 291 350
No. of Characters: 1426 1500
No. of Different Words: 121 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.13 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.9 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.61 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 107 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 82 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 61 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 27 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.25 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.842 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.583 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.478 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.657 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.17 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5