The following appeared as a recommendation by a committee planning a ten-year budget for the city of Calatrava.
"The birthrate in our city is declining: in fact, last year's birthrate was only one-half that of five years ago. Thus the number of students enrolled in our public schools will soon decrease dramatically, and we can safely reduce the funds budgeted for education during the next decade. At the same time, we can reduce funding for athletic playing fields and other recreational facilities. As a result, we will have sufficient money to fund city facilities and programs used primarily by adults, since we can expect the adult population of the city to 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.
The recommendation in the editorial states that the committee should reduce the budget allotted to children and allocate that money to adult activities since the population of children is declining, and as a result, the population of adults will increase. They claim that the decline in the birth rate, particularly in comparison to five years ago, is the main evidence for this trend. However, before this assertion can be evaluated properly, a few questions need to be answered.
First of all, are they sure that this trend of declining in the birthrate will be true in the future? Maybe this decline in the birthrate is due to some relatively temporary phenomenon. For example, maybe there was a major company near the city where most of the residents were working there, and that company faced some problems and had to fire most of its employees or even shut down. Therefore, people, especially young couples, were more careful about having kids until they have a better financial situation. If the above is true, then the argument does not hold water.
Furthermore, does reduce in the birthrate compared to five years ago mean that the birth rate has experienced a real decline in general? There is a chance that the birthrate was higher than normal in ten to five years ago, and now it is reducing to its normal in that region. For example, they expanded the city and sold houses to many newly married couples ten years ago, and this led to an increase in the birthrate at that time, and now everything is going back to normal. If the author cannot provide more accurate information about the abovementioned question, one can not rely on the conclusion it has presented.
Finally, If there is a decline in the number of children in the region, how does it mean that the adults' population will increase? I mean, if the children's population is declining, I think it means that the adult population will decline accordingly in the future, and even if we consider the next ten years, the idea of increasing adults due to decrease in the children population does not seem very logical.
In conclusion, the argument, as it stands now, is considerably flawed due to its reliance on unwarranted assumptions. If the author is able to provide information about the three questioned stated before, then it will be possible to fully evaluate the viability of the proposed recommendation to reduce the budget for funding the children's activities allocate that money to city facilities and programs primarily used by adults.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 2 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 427 350
No. of Characters: 2043 1500
No. of Different Words: 199 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.546 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.785 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.682 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 137 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 103 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 54 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.688 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.553 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.812 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.334 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.334 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.091 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 4, column 99, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'adults'' or 'adult's'?
Suggestion: adults'; adult's
...n the region, how does it mean that the adults population will increase? I mean, if th...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
accordingly, finally, first, furthermore, however, if, may, so, then, therefore, for example, i mean, i think, in conclusion, in general, as a result, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2096.0 2260.96107784 93% => OK
No of words: 427.0 441.139720559 97% => OK
Chars per words: 4.90866510539 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.54576487731 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.75858338946 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 211.0 204.123752495 103% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.494145199063 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 678.6 705.55239521 96% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 6.0 1.67365269461 358% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 16.0 19.7664670659 81% => 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: 69.8672569502 57.8364921388 121% => OK
Chars per sentence: 131.0 119.503703932 110% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.6875 23.324526521 114% => OK
Discourse Markers: 10.1875 5.70786347227 178% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.23330376826 0.218282227539 107% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0767542668265 0.0743258471296 103% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.07451052611 0.0701772020484 106% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.12174757035 0.128457276422 95% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0906122288527 0.0628817314937 144% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.0 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 45.09 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.49 12.5979740519 91% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.48 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 96.0 98.500998004 97% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.