In the lecture, the professor disagrees with the opinion that the Greeks do not use the burning mirror as a weapon, which contradicts the reading's point of view.
Primarily, the lecturer suggests that the mirror can be made of several pieces of copper sheet instead of single one. When arranged together, the copper can be effective. Whereas in the passage, the author strongly believes advanced technology was not available by then.
Secondly, the professor uses the material pitch to disprove the hypothesis in the passage. In order to make the ship water tight, special material are used, namely the pitch. However, pitch is relatively combustible and can start a fire in seconds. Therefore, when caught on a fire, the pitch can spread the fire to the wood, thus giving rise to the burning of the ship. Hence, the burning mirror can be an effective weapon.
Last but not least, the professor lists the fact that the Roman navy were familiar with flaming arrow. Consequently, if they detect the flaming arrows, they will put them out immediately, which make the flaming arrows useless in most cases. However, with the advent of burning mirror, the situation can be totally different. The Roman navy will only recognize the burning mirror as a mirror, which they probably judge as harmless. And it is through this false prediction that burning mirror can be pretty effective. When their ships are caught on fire, they would be surprised by everything that happened.
- sports and social activities 90
- Famous entertainers and athletes deserve to have more privacy than they have now. 61
- In the past, young people depended too much on their parents to make decisions for them; today young people are better able to make decisions about their own lives. 70
- A little over 2,200 years ago, the Roman navy attacked the Greek port city of Syracuse. According to some ancient historians, the Greeks defended themselves with an ingenious weapon called a "burning mirror": a polished copper surface curved to 85
- sports and social activities 90
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, consequently, hence, however, if, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, thus, whereas, in most cases
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 12.0 10.4613686534 115% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 5.04856512141 198% => OK
Conjunction : 3.0 7.30242825607 41% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 11.0 12.0772626932 91% => OK
Pronoun: 13.0 22.412803532 58% => OK
Preposition: 26.0 30.3222958057 86% => OK
Nominalization: 2.0 5.01324503311 40% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1231.0 1373.03311258 90% => OK
No of words: 245.0 270.72406181 90% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.02448979592 5.08290768461 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 3.95632099841 4.04702891845 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.50538445559 2.5805825403 97% => OK
Unique words: 138.0 145.348785872 95% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.563265306122 0.540411800872 104% => OK
syllable_count: 373.5 419.366225166 89% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.55342163355 97% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 3.25607064018 61% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.23620309051 121% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 1.25165562914 320% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.51434878587 66% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 2.5761589404 116% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 13.0662251656 115% => OK
Sentence length: 16.0 21.2450331126 75% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 28.2531414183 49.2860985944 57% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 82.0666666667 110.228320801 74% => OK
Words per sentence: 16.3333333333 21.698381199 75% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.06666666667 7.06452816374 100% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 4.19205298013 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 4.33554083885 138% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 4.45695364238 112% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.27373068433 94% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.132153847502 0.272083759551 49% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0495060958427 0.0996497079465 50% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0529758748225 0.0662205650399 80% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0868291475759 0.162205337803 54% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0421656861201 0.0443174109184 95% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 10.4 13.3589403974 78% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 63.7 53.8541721854 118% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 5.55761589404 56% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 8.4 11.0289183223 76% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.54 12.2367328918 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.3 8.42419426049 99% => OK
difficult_words: 60.0 63.6247240618 94% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 10.7273730684 75% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.4 10.498013245 80% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.2008830022 71% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 85.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 25.5 Out of 30
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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.