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 focus

The reading and the lecture are both about burning mirror: a weapon used by the Greeks to attack Romans. The author of the reading feels that burning mirror is just a myth and the Greeks of Syracuse never really built such a device. The lecture challenges the claims made by the author. She is of the opinion that the lecture said these three reasons are impossible.

To begin with, the author argues that the ancient Greeks were not technologically advanced enough to make such a device. This specific argument is challenged by the lecturer. She claims the burning mirror is not large and they used small sheets of mirror to make this. Moreover, she mentions that the mirror is not technological unlike what the passage says.

Secondly, the writer suggests the burning mirror would have taken a long time to set the ships on fire. The lecturer, however, rebuts this my mentioning that the woods used on the ship would take ten minutes to burn; therefore, they used other material. He elaborates on this by bringing up the point that material called pitch. The pitch can set up the fire easily, thus the ship can be easily burn with this.

Finally, the author posits that Greeks had already a more effective weapon: flaming arrow. In contrast, the lecturer’s position is the Romans already know about arrows, thus they prepare a defense on them. Unlike the burning mirror which is unexpected, they could not prepare a counter attack on this.

Votes
Average: 7.5 (1 vote)
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Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 234, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...acuse never really built such a device. The lecture challenges the claims made by t...
^^^
Line 3, column 297, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...o make this. Moreover, she mentions that the mirror is not technological unlike w...
^^
Line 4, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ological unlike what the passage says. Secondly, the writer suggests the burnin...
^^^
Line 7, column 174, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...is the Romans already know about arrows, thus they prepare a defense on them. Unl...
^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, however, if, moreover, really, second, secondly, so, therefore, thus, in contrast, to begin with

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 11.0 10.4613686534 105% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 5.0 5.04856512141 99% => OK
Conjunction : 3.0 7.30242825607 41% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 8.0 12.0772626932 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 24.0 22.412803532 107% => 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: 1209.0 1373.03311258 88% => OK
No of words: 249.0 270.72406181 92% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.85542168675 5.08290768461 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 3.97237131171 4.04702891845 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.42804881368 2.5805825403 94% => OK
Unique words: 135.0 145.348785872 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.542168674699 0.540411800872 100% => OK
syllable_count: 369.0 419.366225166 88% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.55342163355 97% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 3.25607064018 215% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 9.0 8.23620309051 109% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 1.25165562914 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.51434878587 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 2.5761589404 78% => 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: 25.5702952662 49.2860985944 52% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 80.6 110.228320801 73% => OK
Words per sentence: 16.6 21.698381199 77% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.33333333333 7.06452816374 104% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 4.19205298013 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 4.33554083885 115% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 4.45695364238 90% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.27373068433 140% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.16849641874 0.272083759551 62% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0573260185874 0.0996497079465 58% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0475743546368 0.0662205650399 72% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.104485360669 0.162205337803 64% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0293484445313 0.0443174109184 66% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 9.8 13.3589403974 73% => 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: 10.61 12.2367328918 87% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.79 8.42419426049 92% => OK
difficult_words: 53.0 63.6247240618 83% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 6.5 10.7273730684 61% => 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: 75.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 22.5 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.