The following appeared in the editorial section of a corporate newsletter:
"The common notion that workers are generally apathetic about management issues is false, or at least outdated: a recently published survey indicates that 79 percent of the nearly 1,200 workers who responded to survey questionnaires expressed a high level of interest in the topics of corporate restructuring and redesign of benefits programs."
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
The argument concludes that the common notion that workers are generally apathetic about company’s management issue is false. To support this conclusion, the author cites that a recent survey shows that 79 percent of the workers responded to the survey expressed high level of interest on the topics of reconstructing corporate and redesigning benefits programs. In my opinion, this argument is not sound, however, by following reasons:
First of all, the author mentioned that 79 percent of the 1,200 workers who responded to the survey showed interest on corporate’s reform. However, this 79 percent is not representative of all the workers in the company as the author didn’t mention how many workers work for this company and how many workers were surveyed. It might be possible that there’re thousands of the workers in the company, but the management team only selected a specific group of workers to participate in the survey, by knowing the fact that this group would express positive views of the company. Therefore, the result of the survey cited can not represent the whole crew of the company’s workers.
Moreover, the survey shows that most of the workers who responded to the survey are interested in the topic of corporate reconstructing and the redesign of benefits programs, however, this doesn’t necessarily mean that those workers are not apathetic about company’s management issue. People will seek for changes if they are not satisfied with their current situation, this could be true on those workers in the company. Those workers may be apathetic about the management issue, whereas they still expect the company to become better and reforming is the only way to make this happen. Hence, this evidence is not supportive to the author’s conclusion.
In sum, this argument is not compelling as if fails to address many factors that should be illustrated furtherly. In order to proper conclusion, the author would have to do a thorough survey which can illustrate the views from all the workers and show more evidence to prove those who are interested in the topic of company’s reform are not apathetic about the company’s management issue.
- TPO 2 3
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- not OK. why 'this 79 percent is not representative of all the workers in the company'? maybe it is.
some arguments, like:
1. it works for this company, it may not work for other companies.
2. since it is 'a recently published survey', people may change their ideas later.
3. the survey may happen in one specific country/location/area, may not apply to a common notion.
more...
argument 2 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3.0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 13 15
No. of Words: 356 350
No. of Characters: 1773 1500
No. of Different Words: 157 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.344 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.98 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.642 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 131 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 104 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 67 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 47 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.385 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.08 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.769 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.423 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.599 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.116 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, hence, however, if, may, moreover, so, still, therefore, whereas, first of all, in my opinion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1869.0 2260.96107784 83% => OK
No of words: 353.0 441.139720559 80% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.29461756374 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.33454660006 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.00191337678 2.78398813304 108% => OK
Unique words: 161.0 204.123752495 79% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.456090651558 0.468620217663 97% => OK
syllable_count: 571.5 705.55239521 81% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 12.0 19.7664670659 61% => 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: 29.0 22.8473053892 127% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 71.3665713062 57.8364921388 123% => OK
Chars per sentence: 155.75 119.503703932 130% => OK
Words per sentence: 29.4166666667 23.324526521 126% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.75 5.70786347227 153% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => 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: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.260350347239 0.218282227539 119% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.12070342061 0.0743258471296 162% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0967024834858 0.0701772020484 138% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.193302812897 0.128457276422 150% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0808618321867 0.0628817314937 129% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.2 14.3799401198 127% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 42.04 48.3550499002 87% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.6 12.197005988 120% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.99 12.5979740519 111% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.52 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 77.0 98.500998004 78% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.6 11.1389221557 122% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.