In an attempt to improve highway safety, Prunty County last year lowered its speed limit from 55 to 45 miles per hour on all county highways. But this effort has failed: the number of accidents has not decreased, and, based on reports by the highway patrol, many drivers are exceeding the speed limit. Prunty County should instead undertake the same kind of road improvement project that Butler County completed five years ago: increasing lane widths, resurfacing rough highways, and improving visibility at dangerous intersections. Today, major Butler County roads still have a 55 mph speed limit, yet there were 25 percent fewer reported accidents in Butler County this past year than there were five years ago.
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 author assumes that due to policy failure, Prunty County should follow same kind of road improvement project that Butler County forced. However, the recommendation is unwarranted because there are lacking many pieces of crucial evidence to support the recommendation.
To begin with, the author relies on reports by the highway patrol to suggest that many drivers are exceeding the speed limit. However, the highway patrol does not mention the exactly number of drivers who are exceeding the speed limit as a cogent evidence. Specifically, only one thousand drivers are exceeding speed limit, and fifty thousand drivers attend the survey, which only represent the tenth of flows of cars on highway one day. As a result, the reports by the highway patrol can only represent the minority of drivers who are exceeding the speed limit, and this reports might not reveal most drivers’ behavior towards exceeding speed limit.
Secondly, the arguer’s recommendation relies on what might be a poor analogy between Prunty County and Butler County. However, it is entirely possible that since Butler County have larger economy than Prunty County, Butler County can force such a useful programs to facilitate highway. Whereas Prunty County is incapable of forcing these projects. So, additional evidence that is relative to financial condition of two county is needed. Without accounting for such possible differences between Prunty County and Butler County, the arguer cannot prove that Prunty County will reap the similar benefits from proposed methods.
Finally, based on the fact that fewer reported accidents in Butler County after forcing road improvement projects, the editor infers that forcing road improvement project should be responsible for fewer accidents in Butler County. However, the sequence of these events does not suffice to prove that improvement projects caused the reducing accidents. It might have resulted from some other events instead: higher moral drivers in Butler than Prunty County, or higher fine in exceeding speed limit to just a few possibilities. Thus, an evidence that can indicate Prunty county and Butler County have same condition should be offered in order to provide a reasonable recommendation. Without ruling out scenarios such as these, the editor cannot establish a cause-and-effect relationship between Prunty County and Butler County.
To sum up, if author can offer more pieces of evidence: the exactly number of drivers who exceeds the speed limit and the evidence that can indicate two county have similar condition, including economy and culture literacy, the recommendation could be more reasonable.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 410 350
No. of Characters: 2190 1500
No. of Different Words: 179 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.5 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.341 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.589 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 201 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 124 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 69 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 40 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.118 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.065 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.824 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.402 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.645 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.155 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 520, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...atrol can only represent the minority of drivers who are exceeding the speed limi...
^^
Line 5, column 287, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “Whereas” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
... useful programs to facilitate highway. Whereas Prunty County is incapable of forcing t...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 46, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...m up, if author can offer more pieces of evidence: the exactly number of drivers ...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, however, if, second, secondly, so, thus, whereas, kind of, such as, as a result, to begin with, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 17.0 28.8173652695 59% => OK
Preposition: 44.0 55.5748502994 79% => OK
Nominalization: 20.0 16.3942115768 122% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2255.0 2260.96107784 100% => OK
No of words: 410.0 441.139720559 93% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.5 5.12650576532 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.49982852243 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.68405851963 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 189.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.460975609756 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 705.6 705.55239521 100% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.0802124762 57.8364921388 87% => OK
Chars per sentence: 132.647058824 119.503703932 111% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.1176470588 23.324526521 103% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.0 5.70786347227 123% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.270821591216 0.218282227539 124% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0997799003444 0.0743258471296 134% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0525745680671 0.0701772020484 75% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.141150853356 0.128457276422 110% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0512687349327 0.0628817314937 82% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.5 14.3799401198 115% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 38.66 48.3550499002 80% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.92 12.5979740519 118% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.83 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 104.0 98.500998004 106% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.