The data from a survey of high school math and science teachers show that in the district of Sanlee many of these teachers reported assigning daily homework, whereas in the district of Marlee, most science and math teachers reported assigning homework no more than two or three days per week. Despite receiving less frequent homework assignments, Marlee students earn better grades overall and are less likely to be required to repeat a year of school than are students in Sanlee. These results call into question the usefulness of frequent homework assignments. Most likely the Marlee students have more time to concentrate on individual assignments than do the Sanlee students who have homework every day. Therefore teachers in our high schools should assign homework no more than twice a week.
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 survey mentioned in the prompt concludes that teachers in Sanlee school must provide less homework in order to provide more free time for students to concentrate on individual assignments, which is rife with logical flaws. It includes many of the unwarranted assumptions lacking much of the evidence to supports them, as elaborated below.
Firstly, prompt mentions the students at Marlee are likely to get better grades than the students at Sanlee despite them receiving lesser homework, but it no-where provides evidence about the student's intellectual levels. Are students who are admitted at Marlee more clever than those of Sanlee and require less tutoring and guidance with home works. It might be the case the students at Marlee can take care of themselves by self-learning the concepts, which the students are Sanlee are incapable of. Such evidence would give insights into the difference between the grades at these different schools. The survey also does not include any evidence about the tests which the student from both schools are graded against, are they standardized tests, which provide reliable scores or the tests at Marlee are usually easier compared to those at Sanlee, resulting in lesser grades for the students.
Secondly, the survey also does not provide any evidence with respect to the quality of the home works provided to the students at these different schools. Perhaps, it might the case where the quality of home works provided at Marlee is of higher, which actually helps them excel in their studies, unlike the ones provided at Sanlee which do not really challenge the student intellectually, resulting in lower grades for the students at Sanlee. Even if the quality of assignments provided is the same, there is no evidence provided which mentions that students do actually understand and solve the assignments on their own rather than copying other's work, defying the purpose of the homework altogether.
Lastly, does providing students with more leisure time equate to them using it for studying other individual assignments? Evidence is necessary about the student's usual activities during their leisure time to infer they will be investing the given free time in doing other individual assignments. In contrary to the students using their leisure time to complete other assignments, they might use it for other recreational activities like playing games, visiting friends, etc. Maybe that is what the students need, not having to do more homework, but more time to refresh which would enable them to focus more on their studies, likely resulting in better grades.
Thus, the conclusion of the survey must be complemented with the above evidence and more, in order for us to use the survey as the basis for to conclude, reducing the frequency of homework currently being given to students at Sanlee will help them to get better grades.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 9 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 466 350
No. of Characters: 2372 1500
No. of Different Words: 200 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.646 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.09 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.531 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 181 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 133 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 98 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 43 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 33.286 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.376 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.571 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.411 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.657 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.227 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, firstly, if, lastly, may, really, second, secondly, so, thus, with respect to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 73.0 55.5748502994 131% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2424.0 2260.96107784 107% => OK
No of words: 466.0 441.139720559 106% => OK
Chars per words: 5.2017167382 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.64618479453 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.59536736755 2.78398813304 93% => OK
Unique words: 208.0 204.123752495 102% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.44635193133 0.468620217663 95% => OK
syllable_count: 751.5 705.55239521 107% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 31.0 22.8473053892 136% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 62.5969115319 57.8364921388 108% => OK
Chars per sentence: 161.6 119.503703932 135% => OK
Words per sentence: 31.0666666667 23.324526521 133% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.0 5.70786347227 123% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 1.0 6.88822355289 15% => 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: 0.0970043752274 0.218282227539 44% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0424544357543 0.0743258471296 57% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0335796418013 0.0701772020484 48% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0691415630063 0.128457276422 54% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0309707514813 0.0628817314937 49% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.6 14.3799401198 129% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.01 48.3550499002 83% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.4 12.197005988 126% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.47 12.5979740519 107% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.63 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 102.0 98.500998004 104% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.4 11.1389221557 129% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.