The following appeared in a letter to the school board in the town of Centerville.
“All students should be required to take the driver’s education course at Centerville High School. In the past two years, several accidents in and around Centerville have involved teenage drivers. Since a number of parents in Centerville have complained that they are too busy to teach their teenagers to drive, some other instruction is necessary to ensure that these teenagers are safe drivers. Although there are two driving schools in Centerville, parents on a tight budget cannot afford to pay for driving instruction. Therefore an effective and mandatory program sponsored by the high school is the only solution to this serious problem.”
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.
The author of the letter claims to make a driving program mandatory in high school in order to reduce the number of accidents by teenage drivers. He justifies the claims with assumptions like an increased number of accidents ( involving teenage drivers ), parents being too busy to teach their children, and that they cannot afford to pay for driving instruction. However, the arguments put forth by the author are unpersuasive and illogical.
Firstly, the author states that, several accidents involving teenage drivers have taken place in the past two years. He posits the trend would continue in the present day as well. It might be possible that the increase in accidents was just an anomaly, and the accidents would rather decrease this year. Moreover, 'several' accidents do not necessarily mean 'most' or 'all'. Therefore, if any of these examples are true, then the author's assumptions fail to hold water.
Secondly, the author states that, parents are too busy to teach their children to drive. The author assumes that almost all parents in Centerville are too busy to give driving instructions, but he fails to quantify the number of parents in any sense. Maybe only some of the parents are busy to teach their teenagers and most of them can. Furthermore, what if either of the two parents is busy and not both the parents. Parents could teach their teenagers alternately without any problem. Therefore, the author's assumptions are frivolous.
Lastly, the author assumes that most or all of the parents are on a tight budget to afford to pay for driving instruction. It might be possible that only a few parents cannot afford to pay, and it might not apply to every parent. It might also happen that the driving schools provide instructions at a subsidised rate for a large group of teenagers, which would reduce the amount payable by every parent. If any of these scenarios prove to be true, then the author's assumptions would be significantly weakened.
In conclusion, the school should consider all the facts before implementing a driving course in school and making it mandatory. The author's argument, as it stands now, is flawed due to the following assumptions. If he provides more pieces of evidence to discard these flawed assumptions then the argument would be strengthened and help evaluate the argument more effectively.
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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: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 387 350
No. of Characters: 1903 1500
No. of Different Words: 179 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.435 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.917 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.621 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 145 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 103 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 66 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 43 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.429 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.911 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.329 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.547 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.152 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 225, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ns like an increased number of accidents involving teenage drivers , parents bein...
^^
Line 1, column 252, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma, but not before the comma
Suggestion: ,
... of accidents involving teenage drivers , parents being too busy to teach their c...
^^
Line 5, column 263, Rule ID: SOME_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'some'.
Suggestion: some
...ber of parents in any sense. Maybe only some of the parents are busy to teach their teenage...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 133, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
... in school and making it mandatory. The authors argument, as it stands now, is flawed d...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, furthermore, however, if, lastly, may, moreover, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, well, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.6327345309 81% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 48.0 55.5748502994 86% => OK
Nominalization: 6.0 16.3942115768 37% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1957.0 2260.96107784 87% => OK
No of words: 387.0 441.139720559 88% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.05684754522 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.43534841618 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.71640559137 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 185.0 204.123752495 91% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.478036175711 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 596.7 705.55239521 85% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 41.5812185058 57.8364921388 72% => OK
Chars per sentence: 93.1904761905 119.503703932 78% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.4285714286 23.324526521 79% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.38095238095 5.70786347227 112% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => 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: 0.158267444522 0.218282227539 73% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0476927780838 0.0743258471296 64% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0525389999346 0.0701772020484 75% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0921424964256 0.128457276422 72% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.037670612163 0.0628817314937 60% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.6 14.3799401198 81% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 61.67 48.3550499002 128% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.1 12.197005988 75% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.07 12.5979740519 96% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.47 8.32208582834 90% => OK
difficult_words: 72.0 98.500998004 73% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.