The following appeared in a letter to the school board in the town of Centerville.
"All students should be required to take the driver's education course at Centerville High School. In the past two years, several accidents in and around Centerville have involved teenage drivers. Since a number of parents in Centerville have complained that they are too busy to teach their teenagers to drive, some other instruction is necessary to ensure that these teenagers are safe drivers. Although there are two driving schools in Centerville, parents on a tight budget cannot afford to pay for driving instruction. Therefore, an effective and mandatory program sponsored by the high school is the only solution to this serious problem."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation 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 recommendation.
The author in the letter recommends the school board mandate students of Centerville high school to take the driver’s education course. The author uses some unwarranted assumptions to reach the recommendation. The school board should answer some questions regarding these assumptions to evaluate the recommendation accurately.
First of all, the author simply assumes that the accidents around Centerville, which involved teenage drivers, were due to the lack of driver’s skill of those teenagers. What if other factors play a significant role in those accidents? Was the road around Centerville safe to drive? Was there any external disruption such as running wild animals in the middle of the road? It’s possible that the teenagers were not responsible for those accidents. If the road condition was not suitable to drive, any driver despite their age or capability to drive could have been experienced the accident. Has the road become safer after these accidents? The school board should answer these questions before making a decision to mandate the driver’s course.
Moreover, in the letter, the author claims that the teenage drivers were involved in those accidents around Centerville. What if those teenagers are not the students of Centerville High school? In this case, the mandatory driver’s course would not help to instruct those teenagers how to drive better. Also, the author mentions that there are two driving schools in the town in which families with low income cannot afford to send their teenagers there. It’s possible that these families cannot afford to buy a car for their children as well. Are the teenage drivers from wealthy families? Do all the students of High school have a car to drive? It’s likely that the mandatory driver’s course would not be useful for all of the students of that school. Therefore, the recommendation mentioned in the letter would be invalid.
Finally, the author claims that the mandatory driver’s course sponsored by the high school is the only solution. This is a very extreme and absolute conclusion. What if students are not willing to attend the mandatory driver’s course? Are there any other solutions to that problem? Teenagers usually disobey mandatory tasks due to their age situations. Perhaps, they do not eager to spend their time taking driver’s course. The school board should use a survey and examine the students’ opinions about this mandatory course. Furthermore, it’s likely that DMV has considered a solution for this problem. The school board should ask DMV, or the police department and ask whether they are going to solve this problem. Answering these questions would help the school board to make a logical decision.
All in all, the original argument, as it stands now, is flawed due to the considerable lack of concrete evidence. The school board should answer the pointed questions to be able to evaluate the recommendation precisely.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 10 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 32 15
No. of Words: 470 350
No. of Characters: 2394 1500
No. of Different Words: 197 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.656 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.094 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.591 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 188 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 125 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 95 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 55 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 14.688 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.282 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.406 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.279 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.279 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.063 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 211, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...ssumptions to reach the recommendation. The school board should answer some questio...
^^^
Line 1, column 222, Rule ID: MASS_AGREEMENT[2]
Message: Possible agreement error - use third-person verb forms for singular and mass nouns: 'boards'.
Suggestion: boards
...to reach the recommendation. The school board should answer some questions regarding ...
^^^^^
Line 2, column 651, Rule ID: MASS_AGREEMENT[2]
Message: Possible agreement error - use third-person verb forms for singular and mass nouns: 'boards'.
Suggestion: boards
...safer after these accidents? The school board should answer these questions before ma...
^^^^^
Line 3, column 717, Rule ID: ALL_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'all the'.
Suggestion: all the
...driver’s course would not be useful for all of the students of that school. Therefore, the...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 4, column 435, Rule ID: MASS_AGREEMENT[2]
Message: Possible agreement error - use third-person verb forms for singular and mass nouns: 'boards'.
Suggestion: boards
...time taking driver’s course. The school board should use a survey and examine the stu...
^^^^^
Line 4, column 614, Rule ID: MASS_AGREEMENT[2]
Message: Possible agreement error - use third-person verb forms for singular and mass nouns: 'boards'.
Suggestion: boards
...a solution for this problem. The school board should ask DMV, or the police departmen...
^^^^^
Line 5, column 125, Rule ID: MASS_AGREEMENT[2]
Message: Possible agreement error - use third-person verb forms for singular and mass nouns: 'boards'.
Suggestion: boards
...e lack of concrete evidence. The school board should answer the pointed questions to ...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, finally, first, furthermore, if, moreover, regarding, so, therefore, well, such as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 38.0 28.8173652695 132% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 60.0 55.5748502994 108% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2481.0 2260.96107784 110% => OK
No of words: 470.0 441.139720559 107% => OK
Chars per words: 5.27872340426 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.65612321451 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.74011578136 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 208.0 204.123752495 102% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.442553191489 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 745.2 705.55239521 106% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 14.0 8.76447105788 160% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 32.0 19.7664670659 162% => OK
Sentence length: 14.0 22.8473053892 61% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 32.2307203757 57.8364921388 56% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 77.53125 119.503703932 65% => OK
Words per sentence: 14.6875 23.324526521 63% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.1875 5.70786347227 56% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 7.0 5.25449101796 133% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => 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: 0.33916090547 0.218282227539 155% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0914499496577 0.0743258471296 123% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0948304757263 0.0701772020484 135% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.200556373958 0.128457276422 156% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0623782411732 0.0628817314937 99% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 10.8 14.3799401198 75% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 57.27 48.3550499002 118% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 8.8 12.197005988 72% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.75 12.5979740519 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.42 8.32208582834 89% => OK
difficult_words: 92.0 98.500998004 93% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 7.5 12.3882235529 61% => OK
gunning_fog: 7.6 11.1389221557 68% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.