The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a local newspaper.
"Commuters complain that increased rush-hour traffic on Blue Highway between the suburbs and the city center has doubled their commuting time. The favored proposal of the motorists' lobby is to widen the highway, adding an additional lane of traffic. But last year's addition of a lane to the nearby Green Highway was followed by a worsening of traffic jams on it. A better alternative is to add a bicycle lane to Blue Highway. Many area residents are keen bicyclists. A bicycle lane would encourage them to use bicycles to commute, and so would reduce rush-hour traffic rather than fostering an increase."
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.
While it may be true that adding a bicycle lane will encourage people to use their cars less to reduce rush-hour traffic on Blue highway; however, the author's argument does not make a cogent case. It is easy to understand that adding a traffic lane might not help to reduce traffic on Blue highway because same plan did not work for Green highway, but this argument is rife with holes and assumptions therefore, not strong enough to lead to add a bicycle lane on Blue highway.
The author mentions that drivers’ spending time on Green highway has doubled during last year, however there is no information statistic numbers and reasons for it. The author does not talk about the total number of motorists’ population which is important information. If total number of car drivers on Green highway is doubles during last year, so it means that increases twice time of commuting time has nothing to do with that additional lane of traffic. In addition, the author does not talk about other factors that can affect the traffic on that area. For instance, if there were constructions on Green highway during past year, it could make a traffic worse.
Additionally, the author compares two different highways in two different regions of the town and expects to get the same consequences which is not logical. There is no information about number of traffic lanes on Blue and Green highways which can make a different perspective. For example, Green highway may have less traffic lanes with more motorists whereas Blue highway may have more traffic lanes with fewer car users which can make a different result about rush-hour traffic time.
The author mentions that there are many area residents who ride bicycles, however, there is no guarantee if adding a bicycle lane will encourage people to commute with bicycle instead of their cars. To strengthen his/her suggestion, the author needs to investigate about residents’ interest in riding bicycle through Green highway.
The author can make his/her suggestion persuasive when he/she gathers information about statistic, similarities and differences between two highways, and interest of residents about riding bicycle on Blue highway. After answering these questions, he/she can make such a conclusion.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 371 350
No. of Characters: 1841 1500
No. of Different Words: 165 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.389 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.962 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.517 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 133 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 106 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 57 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 42 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.5 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.154 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.571 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.42 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.42 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.199 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 152, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...r traffic on Blue highway; however, the authors argument does not make a cogent case. I...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, however, if, may, so, then, therefore, whereas, while, for example, for instance, in addition
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 11.0 19.6327345309 56% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1892.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 367.0 441.139720559 83% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.1553133515 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.37689890912 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.63618591923 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 172.0 204.123752495 84% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.468664850136 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 575.1 705.55239521 82% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => 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: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 55.5622926754 57.8364921388 96% => OK
Chars per sentence: 135.142857143 119.503703932 113% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.2142857143 23.324526521 112% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.0 5.70786347227 123% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.18589376466 0.218282227539 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0722208912968 0.0743258471296 97% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0520995336604 0.0701772020484 74% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.105117823486 0.128457276422 82% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0444304254233 0.0628817314937 71% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.0 14.3799401198 111% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 45.09 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.94 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.24 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 77.0 98.500998004 78% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 17.0 12.3882235529 137% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.