the following appeared in a memo from the director of student housing at Buckingham College.
"To serve the housing needs of our students, Buckingham College should build a number of new dormitories. Buckingham's enrollment is growing and, based on current trends, will double over the next 50 years, thus making existing dormitory space inadequate. Moreover, the average rent for an apartment in our town has risen in recent years.
Consequently, students will find it increasingly difficult to afford off-campus housing. Finally, attractive new dormitories would make prospective students more likely to enroll at Buckingham."
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.
In in argument, the director of the student housing at Buckingham College recommends that new housing should be built to accommodate the predicted increase in the number of students. He comes to his conclusion based on recent trends in the growth of the number of students in Buckingham College. While this claim may be true, the author’s conclusion rest on three unwarranted assumptions that diminish the credibility of his recommendation.
Firstly, the director of the student housing at Buckingham College assumes that the current trends is an indicative of what will happen in the future. Perhaps this surge in the number of students might be because of the current expensive advert that the school is doing which it might not be able to sustain for a long time. In addition, the number of students might have reached its zenith and building more dormitories might be a waste of money. If these scenarios are true, then the author’s assumption that the the number of students might increase holds no water.
Secondly, the author assumes that the student of Buckingham College would prefer staying in the school if there is a space for them there. Perhaps most students prefer the degree of freedom that Buckingham College does not provide. The rules at Buckingham College might be really strict and might not allow some things students may relish which may include parties. In addition, the school dormitories might not have security and maybe the students prefer a safer place which off-campus housing can provide them. If these cases are true, then the authors assumption that students would live in the dormitories is diminished
Thirdly, the author assumes that attractive dormitories would make students want to go to Buckingham College, but this might be false. Perhaps the availability of dormitories is an after thought of students and they might prefer a university which has a strong library which Buckingham College might not have. Furthermore, the prospective students might find attractive dormitories redundant. They might assume that the money spent on beautifying the place could have been spent on something else. This may cause the students to regard Buckingham College as a school that does know how to spend money well. If these scenarios are true, then the author’s conclusion is significantly weakened.
In conclusion, the author may be correct in recommending an increase in the number of housing for predicted prospective students. However, as it stands now, the director’s claim rests on three assumptions that weaken the validity of his claim. If the author would like to increase his persuasiveness, he must answer the following three questions above
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 12 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 434 350
No. of Characters: 2209 1500
No. of Different Words: 180 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.564 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.09 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.725 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 163 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 125 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 84 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.667 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.348 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.714 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.371 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.419 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.164 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 2 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 1, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a word
Suggestion: In
In in argument, the director of the student h...
^^^^^
Line 2, column 512, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a word
Suggestion: the
...true, then the author’s assumption that the the number of students might increase holds...
^^^^^^^
Line 2, column 512, Rule ID: DT_DT[1]
Message: Maybe you need to remove one determiner so that only 'the' or 'the' is left.
Suggestion: the; the
...true, then the author’s assumption that the the number of students might increase holds...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 548, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...them. If these cases are true, then the authors assumption that students would live in ...
^^^^^^^
Line 4, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... live in the dormitories is diminished Thirdly, the author assumes that attract...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, furthermore, however, if, may, really, second, secondly, so, then, third, thirdly, well, while, in addition, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 27.0 12.9520958084 208% => Less auxiliary verb wanted.
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 32.0 28.8173652695 111% => OK
Preposition: 52.0 55.5748502994 94% => OK
Nominalization: 6.0 16.3942115768 37% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2266.0 2260.96107784 100% => OK
No of words: 434.0 441.139720559 98% => OK
Chars per words: 5.22119815668 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.56428161445 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.81311400361 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 184.0 204.123752495 90% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.423963133641 0.468620217663 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 669.6 705.55239521 95% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 38.2171100425 57.8364921388 66% => OK
Chars per sentence: 113.3 119.503703932 95% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.7 23.324526521 93% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.15 5.70786347227 125% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 16.0 8.20758483034 195% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.341915969991 0.218282227539 157% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.126274310941 0.0743258471296 170% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.105674359097 0.0701772020484 151% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.219694262018 0.128457276422 171% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0892657373723 0.0628817314937 142% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.0 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 48.3550499002 121% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.0 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.41 8.32208582834 89% => OK
difficult_words: 75.0 98.500998004 76% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.