The following is a recommendation from the personnel director to the president of
Acme Publishing Company.
"Many other companies have recently stated that having their employees take the Easy Read
Speed-Reading Course has greatly improved productivity. One graduate of the course was
able to read a 500-page report in only two hours; another graduate rose from an assistant
manager to vice president of the company in under a year. Obviously, the faster you can read,
the more information you can absorb in a single workday. Moreover, Easy Read would cost
Acme only $500 per employee—a small price to pay when you consider the benefits.
Included in this fee is a three-week seminar in Spruce City and a lifelong subscription to the
Easy Read newsletter. Clearly, to improve productivity, Acme should require all of our
employees to take the Easy Read course."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order
to decide whether the advice and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure
to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the advice.
In this argument, the personnel director of Acme Publishing Company proposes that all of their employees should take reading course offered by Easy Read. To support this conclusion, the director cites other companies that have their employees take the course and two accomplished graduates as examples, as well as points out that the course is cost-effective, as it takes a small price but can bring relatively great advantages to the company. However, these all constitute a problematic and vulnerable support for the author’s recommendation.
First of all, the mere fact that many other companies benefited greatly from the course does not necessarily mean that Acme will benefit in the same way. Perhaps the type of reading on which the course focuses is not the type in which Acme Publishing employees often engage at work, since the editors often need to scrutinize a passage to correct minor errors rather than take a quick look at it. Also, Acme employees are likely to be excellent readers already, as they have abundant experience of editing, and therefore might gain far less from the course than employees of other types of companies.
Secondly, the two individual success stories are not able to justify the effectiveness of the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course. But they can be the exceptions and the director unfairly assume that their accomplishments can be attributed to the course. One graduate of the course could read a 500-page report in only two hours. It is possible that the employee is an outstanding speed-reader, weather taking the course or not. Besides, the quick promotion of another graduate might be due to his abilities of communication, team building, persuasive techniques, etc., any of which can explain that achievement.
Finally, it is unwarranted that the benefits of the course will outweigh its costs. Even though the course only cost $500 per person, Acme Publishing might be of large scale, e.g. 10000 employees, which can put a heavy burden of the company’s budget. In addition, while all of Acme’s employees taking the 3-week course, Acme’s productivity might decline significantly. This decline, along with the fee for the course, might notably outweigh the course’s potential benefits. Without a complete cost-benefit analysis, the director cannot guarantee the profitable prospect of his recommendation.
In sum, the director fails to substantiate his proposal that all employees in Acme Publishing should take the Easy Read course. To bolster his recommendation, he must first provide evidence that employees with similar reading skills as those that Acme employees possess have benefited significantly from such course, a survey of other publishing company might be useful for this purpose. Other specific information that would be help me to better assess the argument includes the number of Acme’s employees and the hours the course involved.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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Need to argue against the conclusion always. For this topic it is:
Clearly, to improve productivity, Acme should require all of our
employees to take the Easy Read course.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 459 350
No. of Characters: 2379 1500
No. of Different Words: 236 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.629 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.183 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.83 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 177 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 134 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 97 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 64 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.158 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.059 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.632 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.37 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.567 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.1 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 559, Rule ID: AND_ETC[1]
Message: Use simply 'etc.'.
Suggestion: etc.
...n, team building, persuasive techniques and etc., any of which can explain that achievem...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, besides, but, e.g., finally, first, however, if, look, second, secondly, so, therefore, while, in addition, first of all, in the same way
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 34.0 28.8173652695 118% => OK
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2437.0 2260.96107784 108% => OK
No of words: 452.0 441.139720559 102% => OK
Chars per words: 5.39159292035 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.61088837703 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.03776691681 2.78398813304 109% => OK
Unique words: 241.0 204.123752495 118% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.533185840708 0.468620217663 114% => OK
syllable_count: 740.7 705.55239521 105% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 53.0222343995 57.8364921388 92% => OK
Chars per sentence: 128.263157895 119.503703932 107% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.7894736842 23.324526521 102% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.52631578947 5.70786347227 132% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.301786279696 0.218282227539 138% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0973791528509 0.0743258471296 131% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0666848299736 0.0701772020484 95% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.181649939888 0.128457276422 141% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0542501510952 0.0628817314937 86% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.9 14.3799401198 111% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.28 12.5979740519 113% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.9 8.32208582834 107% => OK
difficult_words: 118.0 98.500998004 120% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 15.0 12.3882235529 121% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6
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Note: 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.