The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of a large, highly diversified company.
"Ten years ago our company had two new office buildings constructed as regional headquarters for two regions. The buildings were erected by different construction companies—Alpha and Zeta. Although the two buildings had identical floor plans, the building constructed by Zeta cost 30 percent more to build. However, that building's expenses for maintenance last year were only half those of Alpha's. In addition, the energy consumption of the Zeta building has been lower than that of the Alpha building every year since its construction. Given these data, plus the fact that Zeta has a stable workforce with little employee turnover, we recommend using Zeta rather than Alpha for our new building project, even though Alpha's bid promises lower construction costs."
The vice president of the company suggest that the company should use Zeta for their new building project for various reasons. However, the president's assertion relies on several unsubstantiated assumptions and is therefore unpersuasive as it stands.
First of all, the president mentions that the overal maintenance cost are smaller in the building built by Zeta. However, to make this criteria reasonable, there must be other information about it. Since the two building is in different location, it is natural to have different maintenance cost. For example, the tax on possessing the building that Zeta has built, might be lower in that region compared to the building built by Alpha. Thus, the president examplifies further that the energy comsumptions are half of those region that the company Alpha has built. The vice president has an assumption that the company Zeta has built better building than Alpha. However, the vice president does not consider other circumstances. Maybe climate in the region where Zeta has built might be more moderate than the region where Alpha has built. This might lead to extra comsumption on energy.
Secondly, the vice president suggest that Zeta has stable workforce. However, this cannot be reasonable to select Zeta for the project. To make this suggestion reasonable, the vice president should imply additional comparison information such as the stability of workforce in Alpha. Perhaps, Alpha has superior on Zeta on other criteria except for the stability of the workforce. Without additional information given, this suggestion cannot substantiate the assertion above.
Finally, the vice president assumes that even though the cost of the building was higher in Zeta, other benefactors offset this downturn. This assumption, however, relies on weak substantiation. There must be more information about actual cost of the implied statement so that we can compare the benefits and losses acurately. Moreover, other aspects should be considered on this assertion. Just considering the aspects above does not efficiently persuade for the assertion.
In conclusion, the argument that the company should select Zeta on the company's new building project has weak reasoning. Since it fail to give logical explanation about it, the argument above cannot coroborrate the suggestion and is therefore requires extra information.
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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: 9 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 365 350
No. of Characters: 1953 1500
No. of Different Words: 155 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.371 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.351 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.787 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 144 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 117 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 61 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 15.87 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.286 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.696 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.329 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.329 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.081 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 141, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'presidents'' or 'president's'?
Suggestion: presidents'; president's
...oject for various reasons. However, the presidents assertion relies on several unsubstanti...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 2, column 130, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[1]
Message: Did you mean 'these'?
Suggestion: these
...uilding built by Zeta. However, to make this criteria reasonable, there must be othe...
^^^^
Line 2, column 518, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'this region' or 'those regions'?
Suggestion: this region; those regions
...hat the energy comsumptions are half of those region that the company Alpha has built. The v...
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
finally, first, however, if, may, moreover, second, secondly, so, therefore, thus, except for, for example, in conclusion, such as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 3.0 11.1786427146 27% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 42.0 55.5748502994 76% => OK
Nominalization: 23.0 16.3942115768 140% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2003.0 2260.96107784 89% => OK
No of words: 365.0 441.139720559 83% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.48767123288 5.12650576532 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.37092360658 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.86921397179 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 164.0 204.123752495 80% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.449315068493 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 623.7 705.55239521 88% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 15.0 22.8473053892 66% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 30.1831210108 57.8364921388 52% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 87.0869565217 119.503703932 73% => OK
Words per sentence: 15.8695652174 23.324526521 68% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.26086956522 5.70786347227 110% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 11.0 4.67664670659 235% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.205710855869 0.218282227539 94% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0676187233388 0.0743258471296 91% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0707808068173 0.0701772020484 101% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.12528882361 0.128457276422 98% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0703396516223 0.0628817314937 112% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.4 14.3799401198 86% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 47.79 48.3550499002 99% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.27 12.5979740519 113% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.23 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 89.0 98.500998004 90% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.0 11.1389221557 72% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
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.