The following appeared in a memo from the director of student housing at Buckingham College.
"To serve the housing needs of our students, Buckingham College should build a number of new dormitories. Buckingham's enrollment is growing and, based on current trends, will double over the next 50 years, thus making existing dormitory space inadequate. Moreover, the average rent for an apartment in our town has risen in recent years. Consequently, students will find it increasingly difficult to afford off-campus housing. Finally, attractive new dormitories would make prospective students more likely to enroll at Buckingham."
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 proposes building a number of new dormitories since Bukingham's enrollment is growing. He or she offers an interesting argument, but it suffers from some logical flaws and gaps in evidence. While the connections suggested are reasonable, there are many other possible scenarios that should discourage the college from constructing more dorms.
To begin with, the author assumes that existing dormitory space will be inadequate if increase in enrollment continues for many years. Yet there is no reason to believe that this trend will continue long. Usually fashions do not survive long. In Korea during 10 years from 1980 to 1990, for example, physics and astronomy were the most popular subjects for high school students. Therefore, most of the freshman students wanted to study at a university where physics and astronomy departments were well developed. Increase in enrollment of the university, unsurprisingly, became the trend. However, this favor of physics and astronomy did not last long and majors such as engineering and medical are popular nowadays. Thus, we must ask, whether increase in Buckingham matriculation is just being momentary or not. Without more grounded prediction of Bukingham's enrollment, we cannot determine whether the college should build more dorms because of current tendency.
Let us assume, though that current trend in increasing enrollment will last long. We are then prompted to ask whether the increase in Buckingham registration will finally make existing dormitory space inadequate. The author offers no information about the students's preference of dormitory. The majority of students entering Buckingham College actually may not need dormitories for several reasons: already having residence near the college, not preferring dorms, etc. Without more detailed information about demands of dormitories it is hasty to conclude whether more dorms are needed.
Finally, even if we assume that the above assumption will all hold up, we cannot take for granted the demand of new dormitories. The author claims that since average rent for an apartment in the town has risen currently, students will have difficulties in affording off-campus housing. However, the author does not offer information about the town's household condition and about the rental price. The town may have multiple housing options other than apartments such as share house, villa, independent house, etc. Also, even though the recent price rise on the rent for apartment, the rental price may be still low because of slow rate of increase or originally low rental price before it rises. Therefore, before judging the need for new dorms, we need more clues such as current rental price, rate of increase, options for housing, etc.
A close examination of all the assumptions made in the authors' proposal reveals that the college does not have enough justification to build more dormitories. Although the proposal certainly points out a possible course of action, the college should not act until they have more data.
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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: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 474 350
No. of Characters: 2506 1500
No. of Different Words: 242 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.666 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.287 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.704 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 191 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 152 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 103 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 68 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.609 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.581 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.565 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.282 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.493 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.144 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 56, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...tion of all the assumptions made in the authors proposal reveals that the college does ...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, however, if, may, so, still, then, therefore, thus, well, while, for example, such as, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 55.0 55.5748502994 99% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2571.0 2260.96107784 114% => OK
No of words: 474.0 441.139720559 107% => OK
Chars per words: 5.42405063291 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.66599839874 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.76841565326 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 256.0 204.123752495 125% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.540084388186 0.468620217663 115% => OK
syllable_count: 800.1 705.55239521 113% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 34.3752003631 57.8364921388 59% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 102.84 119.503703932 86% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.96 23.324526521 81% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.2 5.70786347227 91% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.192274118083 0.218282227539 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0500485430898 0.0743258471296 67% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0482442520676 0.0701772020484 69% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.112269440911 0.128457276422 87% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0409562934934 0.0628817314937 65% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.6 14.3799401198 95% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 44.75 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.16 12.5979740519 112% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.53 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 120.0 98.500998004 122% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 7.0 12.3882235529 57% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.