The following is a recommendation from the personnel director to the president of Acme Publishing Company.
"Many other companies have recently stated that having their employees take the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course has greatly improved productivity. One graduate of the course was able to read a 500-page report in only two hours; another graduate rose from an assistant manager to vice president of the company in under a year. Obviously, the faster you can read, the more information you can absorb in a single workday. Moreover, Easy Read would cost Acme only $500 per employee—a small price to pay when you consider the benefits. Included in this fee is a three-week seminar in Spruce City and a lifelong subscription to the Easy Read newsletter. Clearly, Acme would benefit greatly by requiring all of our employees to take the Easy Read course."
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.
The proposer makes a suggestion that all employees in Acme company should take the Easy Reading Speed-Reading (ERSR) Courses basing on the evidence that the feedback from two previous course takers as well as some employers of graduates were quite good. However, more evidence is needed to evaluate the soundness of this suggestion.
To begin with, the evidence is lack regarding the reliability of these feedbacks. Firstly, the proposer cited the fact that many companies stated that they have benefited from the course. However, there is no evidence that what was the feedback from other companies, and essential, how much proportion of companies think the course is worthy. If it turns out that the so-called many company just represent a minority of all the companies that have sent their employees to the course, then it is not wise to the Acme company to take it. Secondly, the proposer used the progress made by two individual testimonials to illustrate the effectiveness of the course. Again, a similar problem occur that these two people might not be representative for all the graduates. Moreover, it is cited that one of these two graduates made it to read 500-page report in only two hours.
This however, does not tell us about the progress he/she made through taking the course, as no evidence was given about his/her initial reading speed. As for the other one who received a promotion during taking the course, the proposer fails to provide evidence that the promotion was associated with taking the course at all. In this case, we do not know how much benefit the graduate has gained from taking the course. Therefore, the proposal that the Acme should have their employees take the course is not well-justified.
Another backing point the proposer used to buttress his advice was the assumption that the faster the reading speed, the more information one can absorb in a single day. This assumption, however, does not necessarily hold true, before any sound scientific evidence is provided. It is possible that there is a limit of how much information can be stored in human’s brain in a single day, in which case the correctness of the assumption would be undermined, thus render the proposal invalid.
Granted that the ERSR course does have a positive effect for employees’ productivity, we need the proof that all the employees in the Acme Company would benefit from taking it. Common sense tells me there are usually different department and different positions in a company, some of whom may be in charge of the logistics. In other words, perhaps the benefit that the course provide is only valuable to those whose work involves reading documents, but not others who rarely need reading skills in their workplace. For that matter, maybe not everyone should attend the course, unless the proposer could show us the evidence of how everyone could benefit from it.
In sum, the proposer need to provide more evidence before the suggestion is justified.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- partly OK
argument 2 -- not OK
argument 3 -- not OK
argument 4 -- OK
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Let's analyze the structure of the statement and argue accordingly:
condition 1:
One graduate of the course was able to read a 500-page report in only two hours; another graduate rose from an assistant manager to vice president of the company in under a year. Obviously, the faster you can read, the more information you can absorb in a single workday. //two samples are too small
condition 2:
Moreover, Easy Read would cost Acme only $500 per employee—a small price to pay when you consider the benefits. Included in this fee is a three-week seminar in Spruce City and a lifelong subscription to the Easy Read newsletter. //suppose the company has 500 employees, it is still a big money: 500x$500 = $250,000
conclusion:
Clearly, Acme would benefit greatly by requiring all of our employees to take the Easy Read course.//maybe only some employees need it
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 498 350
No. of Characters: 2418 1500
No. of Different Words: 225 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.724 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.855 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.548 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 174 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 126 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 92 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 54 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.714 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.469 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.714 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.33 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.529 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.125 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, however, if, may, moreover, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, thus, well, as for, as well as, in other words, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 3.0 11.1786427146 27% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 22.0 13.6137724551 162% => OK
Pronoun: 47.0 28.8173652695 163% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 55.0 55.5748502994 99% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2499.0 2260.96107784 111% => OK
No of words: 496.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 5.03830645161 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.71922212354 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.67982305627 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 228.0 204.123752495 112% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.459677419355 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 780.3 705.55239521 111% => 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: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 47.0219228072 57.8364921388 81% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.0 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.619047619 23.324526521 101% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.61904761905 5.70786347227 133% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.291329494332 0.218282227539 133% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0863584430531 0.0743258471296 116% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0880184563473 0.0701772020484 125% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.147980570415 0.128457276422 115% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0867534668387 0.0628817314937 138% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.1 14.3799401198 98% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.25 12.5979740519 97% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.93 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 99.0 98.500998004 101% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.