Both the reading passage and the lecture deal with the same topic: the credibility of a theory about the “burning mirror” - an ancient Greek weapon made of polished copper that could reflect sunlight in order to burn the Roman ships. However, their perspective is different. According to the reading passage, this story is nothing more than a myth, considering the Greeks’ insufficient technological development at that time, the large amount of time for the weapon to burn ships and the unnecessity of such a weapon because of a similar pre-existing weapon. Nevertheless, the lecture casts doubt on the arguments made by the writer.
The first point made in the passage is that the complex making process of a “burning mirror” does not comply with the ancient Greeks’ existing state of scientific advances, which could not have produced a large panel of copper that has a perfect parabolic structure for the burning mirror to work effectively. In contrast, the professor contradicts the writer’s idea by asserting that the mirror does not require a large sheet of copper to create, but can be made of several pieces of polished copper, which are easier to find. Moreover, the ancient Greeks know the parabola’s properties, so they could easily arrange the copper pieces into the desired shape.
Another point that the reading passage emphasizes is that since the copper mirror takes a long time to burn wooden ships, as pointed out in an experiment, this method is impractical. However, the professor refutes this argument and claims that the aforementioned experiment does not take into account the fact that ships are made of not only wood but also other materials, one of which is pitch. Unlike wood, pitch is rather inflammable so it will catch fire immediately and spread to the wooden parts of the ships, even when they are moving. Therefore, burning mirrors will not require abundant time to take effect.
The last point of the reading passage is that as the Greeks’ flaming arrows had already served the purpose of burning down enemy’s ships, there was no need for them to create a new weapon that basically does the same thing. On the contrary, the professor refuses to accept the writer’s idea, by stating the arrows’ drawbacks, which is their visibility, causes them to be easily recognized. However, the burning mirror can counter this disadvantage by reflecting invisible light and cause more unpredictable and unforeseen attacks. In this way, the burning mirror will be much more effective than the arrows.
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, moreover, nevertheless, so, therefore, in contrast, on the contrary
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 10.4613686534 153% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 5.04856512141 178% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 7.30242825607 110% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 12.0772626932 132% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 22.412803532 103% => OK
Preposition: 49.0 30.3222958057 162% => OK
Nominalization: 4.0 5.01324503311 80% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2137.0 1373.03311258 156% => OK
No of words: 417.0 270.72406181 154% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.12470023981 5.08290768461 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.5189133491 4.04702891845 112% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.72155553694 2.5805825403 105% => OK
Unique words: 215.0 145.348785872 148% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.515587529976 0.540411800872 95% => OK
syllable_count: 649.8 419.366225166 155% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.55342163355 103% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 3.25607064018 92% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.23620309051 121% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 1.25165562914 80% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.51434878587 66% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 2.5761589404 233% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 13.0662251656 115% => OK
Sentence length: 27.0 21.2450331126 127% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 78.939526784 49.2860985944 160% => OK
Chars per sentence: 142.466666667 110.228320801 129% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.8 21.698381199 128% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.53333333333 7.06452816374 92% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 4.19205298013 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 4.33554083885 115% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 4.45695364238 157% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.27373068433 70% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.0 0.272083759551 0% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0 0.0996497079465 0% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0 0.0662205650399 0% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0 0.162205337803 0% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0 0.0443174109184 0% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.6 13.3589403974 124% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 44.07 53.8541721854 82% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 5.55761589404 158% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 11.0289183223 125% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.71 12.2367328918 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.65 8.42419426049 103% => OK
difficult_words: 97.0 63.6247240618 152% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 10.7273730684 135% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 10.498013245 122% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.2008830022 116% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 20 minutes.
It is not exactly right on the topic in the view of e-grader. Maybe there is a wrong essay topic.
Rates: 3.33333333333 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 1.0 Out of 30
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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.