The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Parkville Daily newspaper.
"Throughout the country last year, as more and more children below the age of nine participated in youth-league sports, over 40,000 of these young players suffered injuries. When interviewed for a recent study, youth-league soccer players in several major cities also reported psychological pressure exerted by coaches and parents to win games. Furthermore, education experts say that long practice sessions for these sports take away time that could be used for academic activities. Since the disadvantages outweigh any advantages, we in Parkville should discontinue organized athletic competition for children under nine."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
In the letter to the editor, the author suggests that Parkville should cancel the athletic competition for children below 9 year of age due to many disadvantages. However, the claim drawn in the argument might ultimately prove valid, the prompt, as it stands now, contain three unstated assumptions that undermine its validity.
First of all, the author fails to mention about kinds of the injuries suffered by 40,000 younger children. For instance, the authors does not mention about the severity of the injuries. In addition, the cause of such accident has not been mentioned. It may be possible, that, due to improper maintenance has cause such dangerous outcome because of which it might not be as one of the reason for cancelling the competition for the young athletics.
Second of all, the author states that soccer players, in majority of cities, are experiencing mental pressure from their coaches and parents for winning the games. Here, the author assumed that other players are also facing the same problem as young soccer players. If it is really true that the result of recent study done on soccer player is applicable for depicting conditions of all other player then the author needs to state explicitly about the condition of other sports players.
Lastly, If children are participating in the league, then it is might be possible that they must be following a proper time table so that children study should not get disturbed. For instance, Time has been a lot for practicing after school. Furthermore, recession must have been made so that player should not miss their practice during competition. Therefore, it invalidate the author stated assumption that academic activities of students has been affected by long session of practice.
To conclude, although it is possible that the author’s conclusion is valid, the argument does not sound footing due to its reliance on three unwarranted assumptions. If the author would like to make the argument more persuasive then he must address the three assumptions by providing the most pertinent evidence.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 6 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 337 350
No. of Characters: 1691 1500
No. of Different Words: 181 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.285 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.018 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.607 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 129 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 91 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 71 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 36 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.467 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.965 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.867 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.335 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.617 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.102 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 366, Rule ID: IT_VBZ[1]
Message: Did you mean 'invalidates'?
Suggestion: invalidates
...ctice during competition. Therefore, it invalidate the author stated assumption that acade...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 167, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...iance on three unwarranted assumptions. If the author would like to make the argum...
^^
Line 9, column 229, Rule ID: LESS_MORE_THEN[1]
Message: Did you mean 'than'?
Suggestion: than
...ke to make the argument more persuasive then he must address the three assumptions b...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, furthermore, however, if, lastly, may, really, second, so, then, therefore, for instance, in addition, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.6327345309 81% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 1.0 11.1786427146 9% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 40.0 55.5748502994 72% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1747.0 2260.96107784 77% => OK
No of words: 337.0 441.139720559 76% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.18397626113 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.28457229495 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.71945141575 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 186.0 204.123752495 91% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.551928783383 0.468620217663 118% => OK
syllable_count: 520.2 705.55239521 74% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
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: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.7196841694 57.8364921388 81% => OK
Chars per sentence: 116.466666667 119.503703932 97% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.4666666667 23.324526521 96% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.53333333333 5.70786347227 150% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.120412986456 0.218282227539 55% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.039682105062 0.0743258471296 53% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0542514802049 0.0701772020484 77% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0639767131826 0.128457276422 50% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0299216369592 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: 14.2 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 57.61 48.3550499002 119% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.06 12.5979740519 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.66 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 84.0 98.500998004 85% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.