The following appeared in a letter to the city council of Canbury from the president of Plexma Motors.
"I am pleased that the council is considering Plexma`s plans to open a new manufacturing site in Canbury next year. In addition to our regular line of cars, Plexma has also begun designing and testing a line of automated self-driving vehicles. In a recent survey conducted by local media, 60 percent of Canbury`s residents reported that they would purchase a Plexma self-driving vehicle in the future if they were confident in the vehicles` safety. We are happy to report that last summer, we tested our new line of self-driving vehicles in downtown Canbury with great success. Not only did our five tested vehicles remain accident-free for two months during testing, but in a survey conducted after testing, 90 percent of Canbury`s residents reported that when they were downtown and our vehicles were in operation they felt very safe. Because steady demand for our self-driving vehicles will create new jobs and thereby greatly benefit Canbury`s economy as a whole, I recommend that you vote to allow Plexma to begin manufacturing and selling these vehicles in Canbury."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
According to the letter from the president of Plexma Motors to the Canbury city council, the Plexma motors should have the permission from the city council to manufacture and sell self-driving vehicles. It is stated based on the safety of the self-driving vehicles and benefit to the city's economy. However, before this recommendation can be properly evaluated, three specific questions must be answered.
First of all, is the test driving comparable to the actual driving? It is a possibility that during the test driving, there were no other vehicles in the street or the lane was too wide. Perhaps, the testing vehicles were manufactured with additional care and precaution to prevent any accidents in front of the people. However, if these self guiding vehicles are launched in the streets, they may result in frequent accidents because of the heavy traffic or the average quality of those vehicles. If any of these situations has merits, the argument does not hold water.
Secondly, is the streets of downtown and other area comparable? It may be possible that the Plexma Motors cunningly chose the downtown roads for testing the self-guiding vehicles since those roads hardly have any accidental reports for manual driving vehicles. Perhaps, these people voted negatively when they saw the operations in other areas. If the above information comes to light, the conclusion that has been drawn from the argument will be undermined.
Last but not the least, how do the self-driving vehicles open new job opportunities? Although the author argues that self-driving cars will enable more work opportunities, it does not mention how it will be created. It is a possibility that, because of launching self-driving vehicles, people are no longer interested to hire drivers to drive the cars like as before. It may be possible that the on site traffic control system will no longer be required to maintain traffics in those roads. However, the city council may need to install digitalized traffic control system to track the road safety which may add extra costs. If any of the aforementioned points becomes true, the argument will be seriously weakened.
To summarize, the argument as it stands now, is riffed with many unwarranted assumptions and the author needs to provide answers (perhaps in the form of a systematic research) to the questions mentioned in the above writing. If the author can answer these questions with adequate evidence, the recommendations of the letter can be properly evaluated.
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: 6 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 406 350
No. of Characters: 2053 1500
No. of Different Words: 200 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.489 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.057 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.77 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 157 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 119 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 79 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 46 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.3 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.198 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.305 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.517 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.07 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 153, Rule ID: A_UNCOUNTABLE[3]
Message: Uncountable nouns are usually not used with an indefinite article. Use simply 'systematic research'.
Suggestion: systematic research
... provide answers perhaps in the form of a systematic research to the questions mentioned in the above...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, may, second, secondly, as to, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2109.0 2260.96107784 93% => OK
No of words: 406.0 441.139720559 92% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.19458128079 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.48881294772 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.85582290727 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 209.0 204.123752495 102% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.514778325123 0.468620217663 110% => OK
syllable_count: 656.1 705.55239521 93% => 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: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 44.7487150654 57.8364921388 77% => OK
Chars per sentence: 105.45 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.3 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.35 5.70786347227 59% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => 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: 0.137024527898 0.218282227539 63% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0391409937303 0.0743258471296 53% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0914687153455 0.0701772020484 130% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0844588631426 0.128457276422 66% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.101141423157 0.0628817314937 161% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.2 14.3799401198 92% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.82 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.63 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 103.0 98.500998004 105% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.