An ancient, traditional remedy for insomnia—the scent of lavender flowers—has now been proved effective. In a recent study, 30 volunteers with chronic insomnia slept each night for three weeks on lavender-scented pillows in a controlled room where their sleep was monitored electronically. During the first week, volunteers continued to take their usual sleeping medication. They slept soundly but wakened feeling tired. At the beginning of the second week, the volunteers discontinued their sleeping medication. During that week, they slept less soundly than the previous week and felt even more tired. During the third week, the volunteers slept longer and more soundly than in the previous two weeks. Therefore, the study proves that lavender cures insomnia within a short period of time.
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
Insomnia is a condition where one does not feel sleepy at all but is always tired. Insomnia cases have dramatically increased in the past few years. The author recommends lavender scent as a cure to the insomnia condition. The author makes some unwarranted suggestions which lack evidence.
Firstly, the prompt mentions that the lavender scented pillows proved effective for all the patients diagnosed with chronic insomnia. The author fails to mention the patients age, allergies, race and time since they were diagnosed. A Canadian male of age forty might have different genetic traits when compared to an African female in her late twenties. Therefore, they might not be receptive of the lavender scent which might precipitates various side effects. If the above assertions hold true, then the argument might not hold water.
Secondly, the author clearly states that lavender scent was tested on only thirty people. However, questions arise if the output is credible if it has only been tested on few subjects. For example, to release a drug or any medicine into the market, a series of tests will be conducted in laboratories, rodents and few hundreds of people systematically. The results obtained from the thirty patients might not be similar to the other set of patients with the same disease. If these reasons are true, then the argument is significantly weakened.
Thirdly, the author suggest that the volunteers were unable to sleep soundly during the second week. The cause of this is never clearly stated perhaps it might be due to the initial exposure of scent without proper medication or due to the smell itself. If the cause is lavender scent itself then it is ironic, the scent that should put the people into sleep is disturbing them from getting enough sleep. If these suggestions are true, then the argument is weakened.
In conclusion, the author makes some unwarranted assumptions without providing reliable information on the subject. If the author is able to provide more evidence, then it will be possible to fully evaluate the viability of proposed argument.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 341 350
No. of Characters: 1704 1500
No. of Different Words: 188 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.297 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.997 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.56 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 130 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 96 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 67 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 31 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.05 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.74 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.65 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.298 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.519 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.082 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, however, if, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, third, thirdly, for example, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 17.0 28.8173652695 59% => OK
Preposition: 38.0 55.5748502994 68% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1755.0 2260.96107784 78% => OK
No of words: 341.0 441.139720559 77% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.14662756598 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.29722995808 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.66365106994 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 191.0 204.123752495 94% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.560117302053 0.468620217663 120% => OK
syllable_count: 545.4 705.55239521 77% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 22.8473053892 74% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 30.7806351461 57.8364921388 53% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 87.75 119.503703932 73% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.05 23.324526521 73% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.75 5.70786347227 101% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.201142021132 0.218282227539 92% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0598433795388 0.0743258471296 81% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0829371078948 0.0701772020484 118% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.103262341497 0.128457276422 80% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0617470217997 0.0628817314937 98% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.4 14.3799401198 79% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 54.22 48.3550499002 112% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.29 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.69 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 91.0 98.500998004 92% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 6.5 12.3882235529 52% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 8.8 11.1389221557 79% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.