The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a local newspaper.
"Too much emphasis is placed on the development of reading skills in elementary school. Many students who are discouraged by the lonely activity of reading turn away from schoolwork merely because they are poor readers. But books recorded on audiocassette tape provide an important alternative for students at this crucial stage in their education, one the school board should not reject merely because of the expense involved. After all, many studies attest to the value of allowing students to hear books read aloud; there is even evidence that students whose parents read to them are even more likely to become able readers. Thus, hearing books on tape can only make students more eager to read and to learn. Therefore, the school board should encourage schools to buy books on tape and to use them in elementary education."- GRE Argument 43
This editorial concludes that the school board should invest in audio cassettes because listening to audio cassettes makes elementary students more eager to learn and to read. To support this conclusion the editorial cites studies showing the value of listening to someone else read. However, dose scrutiny of this evidence and of the editorial's line of reasoning reveals that they provide little credible support for the editorial's conclusion.
To begin with, the argument claims that for a poor reader the isolation of reading will provide a general disincentive to do schoolwork. However, ...
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 479 350
No. of Characters: 2508 1500
No. of Different Words: 207 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.678 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.236 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.85 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 187 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 151 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 100 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 61 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.81 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.122 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.619 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.327 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.563 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.138 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5