The following appeared as an editorial in the student newspaper of Groveton College.
"To combat the recently reported dramatic rise in cheating among college students, colleges and
universities should adopt honor codes similar to Groveton's, which calls for students to agree not
to cheat in their academic endeavors and to notify a faculty member if they suspect that others
have cheated. Groveton's honor code replaced an old-fashioned system in which teachers closely
monitored students. Under that system, teachers reported an average of thirty cases of cheating per
year. The honor code has proven far more successful: in the first year it was in place, students
reported twenty-one cases of cheating; five years later, this figure had dropped to fourteen.
Moreover, in a recent survey conducted by the Groveton honor council, a majority of students said
that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without."
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 claims that in order to compete with the raising reports of cheating, all colleges and universities should adopt the new honor codes. The author provides some benefits to support his argument such as the less reported cheating, replacement of the outdated monitor system, and fewer students are intended to cheat in the exam. However, to further bolster his argument, more credence is needed.
The article claims that all colleges and universities need to enforce the honor code based on the positive result from the survey in Groveton college. Yet more evidence to support this claim is necessary since we are uncertain if these students are telling the truth or not. Nobody wants to admit that they cheat during the exam, especially students in the college. Also, even if students are telling the truth that they do not cheat anymore since the implementation of the honor code, it does not mean that their behavior change is not based on other reasons. It might because the penalty after their cheats in the exam are harsh, so students are worried about it and do not have the courage to cheat again. Therefore, mentioning the survey as the proof is untenable to say that implementation of the honor code leads to less cheating on campus.
The author also states that the enforcement of the honor code would decrease the number of cheating cases than the use of the teacher’s monitor. However, it needs more proofs to make sure that these students and teachers’ testimonies are trustable. Teachers might report more cheating cases than students since students do not want to get trouble to report cheating, so it seems teachers are reporting more cases than students. The exact place that students are taking the exam and the number of students who take the exam need to be provided to back up the argument. Consequently, more evidence about the right information of the exam should include.
Even if the honor code did decrease the number of students in Groveton College to cheat, it is tenuous to conclude that all other colleges and universities’ cheating cases would decline. The educational level of the college and the quality of their students are essential to know since different schools and students might have different numbers of cheating cases. Those high-quality universities always contain high-quality students, which means they have high self-management ability and they would not cheat on the exam. Some low-quality schools students might not control themselves that even though the honor code is implemented, they would keep cheating in the exam. As a result, it’s important to know the quality of the school and students so that the argument could be supported.
All in all, the author needs to offer far more evidence to support his argument that the truthfulness of teachers and students in Groveton college, the accurate place and number of students need to be informed as well, and the quality of the college and students are considerable.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
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: 20 15
No. of Words: 495 350
No. of Characters: 2436 1500
No. of Different Words: 197 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.717 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.921 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.546 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 167 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 136 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 95 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 34 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.75 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.233 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.65 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.371 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.553 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.111 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, consequently, however, if, so, therefore, well, such as, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 36.0 28.8173652695 125% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 63.0 55.5748502994 113% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2525.0 2260.96107784 112% => OK
No of words: 495.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 5.10101010101 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.71684168287 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.71543709417 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 207.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.418181818182 0.468620217663 89% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 779.4 705.55239521 110% => 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: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.1608871232 57.8364921388 80% => OK
Chars per sentence: 126.25 119.503703932 106% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.75 23.324526521 106% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.7 5.70786347227 65% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.239344716138 0.218282227539 110% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0838010653516 0.0743258471296 113% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0587183017284 0.0701772020484 84% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.147294997931 0.128457276422 115% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0300753099936 0.0628817314937 48% => 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: 15.0 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.6 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.11 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 103.0 98.500998004 105% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => 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.