The following is a recommendation from the personnel director to the president of Acme Publishing Company.
"Many other companies have recently stated that having their employees take the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course has greatly improved productivity. One graduate of the course was able to read a 500-page report in only two hours; another graduate rose from an assistant manager to vice president of the company in under a year. Obviously, the faster you can read, the more information you can absorb in a single workday. Moreover, Easy Read would cost Acme only $500 per employee — a small price to pay when you consider the benefits. Included in this fee is a three-week seminar in Spruce City and a lifelong subscription to the Easy Read newsletter. Clearly, to improve productivity, Acme should require all of our employees to take the Easy Read course."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the advice and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the advice.
In the given argument prompt, the personal director of Acme Publishing Company recommends that all employees of Acme Publishing Company should enrol in Easy Read course to improve their overall productivity. The director arrives at this conclusion based on the improved productivity observed in case of competitor companies and the relatively low cost associated with the enrolment of the course. While the recommendation given might be true, the personnel director of Acme Publishing Company is required to answer the following three questions pertinent to the three assumptions (backed by superfluous statistics and conjectures) implicit in supporting his argument.
Firstly, how valid is the claim that the increase in efficiency observed in the employees works is indeed fuelled by their enrolment to the Easy Read Speed-Reading course? It might just be the case that this was due to some other major policy changes recently done in the company. For instance, the Company may have introduced some kind of incentives/perks directly linked with the productivity of the Employee which in effect propelled them to increase their productiveness. In addition to this, it is also possible that Company has induced some kind of negative reinforcement strategy such as laying off the less productive employees who perform below a certain expected level of productivity for consecutively 2-3 months. The answer to this question, If any of these two cases prove to be true, would severely weaken the author’s recommendation.
Secondly, how true is the claim that the performance of one graduate to read a given no of pages in a defined time and another graduate’s speedy promotion is actually representative of the employees of the company in general? Perhaps the two employees, whose example the president provides in support to his argument that Easy Read courses do increase the productivity, were already astute learners and had brilliant performance history even before they took the said courses. Also, it might be true that the employee who was able to read the 500 pages in two hours had already gone through the report beforehand and thus was able to quickly sift through the pages and may be the employee who got promoted from assistant manager to vice president did so due to his obsequious nature and not due to his performance efficiency. If any of these stated cases are proved genuine, the persuasiveness of the president’s argument will be considerably undermined.
Finally, what if the cost associated with these courses actually form a significant part of the employee’s renumeration and far offsets the benefits borne out of them in terms of value for money? The president assumes that the cost of 500 USD is a significantly trivial amount to be paid by the employees in comparison to the benefits that the Easy Read Courses provide. It may just be the case that a considerable no. of employees of the company live hand to mouth and depend on their salaries to get by. And if these employees are forced to enrol in a course that will snatch them out of 500 USD, it might just make these employees demoralised and in effect, their productivity may actually decrease instead of improving. Also, in addition to this, what if these courses cater only to a certain specific department of the company and would not really relate much to the other sections of the companies such as the administration & welfare, the human resources department etc. in which case paying for these courses will only add to their financial burdens. If any of the these two cases prove to be correct, the author’s contention that the course does not exert considerable financial stress on the employees falls apart.
To conclude, while the personnel director’s recommendation that all the employees to subscribe to the Easy read course to increase their overall productivity might be correct, he should first address the aforementioned three questions in a comprehensive manner to enhance the persuasiveness of his argument.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 653 350
No. of Characters: 3307 1500
No. of Different Words: 286 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.055 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.064 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.937 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 230 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 194 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 142 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 93 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 34.368 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.113 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.737 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.336 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.336 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.106 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 86, Rule ID: NOW[2]
Message: Did you mean 'now' (=at this moment) instead of 'no' (negation)?
Suggestion: now
...ormance of one graduate to read a given no of pages in a defined time and another ...
^^
Line 3, column 509, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...courses. Also, it might be true that the employee who was able to read the 500 pa...
^^
Line 4, column 952, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'resources'' or 'resource's'?
Suggestion: resources'; resource's
...the administration & welfare, the human resources department etc. in which case paying fo...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 236, Rule ID: IN_A_X_MANNER[1]
Message: Consider replacing "in a comprehensive manner" with adverb for "comprehensive"; eg, "in a hasty manner" with "hastily".
...ress the aforementioned three questions in a comprehensive manner to enhance the persuasiveness of his ar...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, finally, first, firstly, if, may, really, second, secondly, so, thus, while, for instance, in addition, in general, kind of, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 48.0 28.8173652695 167% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 94.0 55.5748502994 169% => OK
Nominalization: 25.0 16.3942115768 152% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3372.0 2260.96107784 149% => OK
No of words: 652.0 441.139720559 148% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.1717791411 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.05314661074 4.56307096286 111% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.04850806226 2.78398813304 110% => OK
Unique words: 290.0 204.123752495 142% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.444785276074 0.468620217663 95% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1051.2 705.55239521 149% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 31.0 22.8473053892 136% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 74.9519876555 57.8364921388 130% => OK
Chars per sentence: 160.571428571 119.503703932 134% => OK
Words per sentence: 31.0476190476 23.324526521 133% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.04761904762 5.70786347227 123% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.364788745952 0.218282227539 167% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.107460477449 0.0743258471296 145% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0834498978946 0.0701772020484 119% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.212539464644 0.128457276422 165% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0684813871611 0.0628817314937 109% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.4 14.3799401198 128% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.01 48.3550499002 83% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.4 12.197005988 126% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.3 12.5979740519 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.73 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 147.0 98.500998004 149% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 19.0 12.3882235529 153% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.4 11.1389221557 129% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Write the essay in 30 minutes.
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.