The following appeared in an editorial in a Prunty County newspaper.
"In an attempt to improve highway safety, Prunty County recently lowered its speed limit from 55 miles per hour to 45 on all major county roads. But the 55 mph limit should be restored, because this safety effort has failed. Most drivers are exceeding the new speed limit and the accident rate throughout Prunty County has decreased only slightly. If we want to improve the safety of our roads, we should instead undertake the same kind of road improvement project that Butler County completed five years ago: increasing lane widths and resurfacing rough roads. Today, major Butler County roads still have a 55 mph speed limit, yet there were 25 percent fewer reported accidents in Butler County this past year than there were five years ago."
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 arqument.
The author of the editorial suggests to restore 55 mph speed limit in Prunty County and undertake the similar road improvements that Butler County completed 5 years ago. While the suggestion may sound plausible, the author fails to make a cogent and concise argument, relying on unproven assumptions and analogies and being unable to provide the necessary data on highway safety in Prunty County.
First of all, the author assumes that previous safety effort to lower the speed by 10 mph on all major roads has failed, stating that the accident rate in Prunty County “has decreased only slightly”. However, the measure was implemented only recently and, perhaps, there was not enough time to fully reinforce it. Even the fact that most drivers are exceeding the new speed limit could point out/on to a little awareness among the drivers regarding the new rules. Moreover, the decrease may seem minor as a number, but in the scope of the statistical model it might be significant.
Second, before any efforts regarding the highway safety could be suggested and implemented,(?) the thorough research must be conducted on the types and reasons of accidents in Prunty County and the outcomes should be summarized in the editorial. Based on these outcomes the road improvement projects could be suggested reflecting the current and local problems on the roads. The author omits any information regarding the situation on the highway giving us no ground to evaluate his suggestions.
Finally, the author assumes that road improvements undertaken in Butler County could be applied and lead to similar success in Prunty County. However, the author does not provide any proof that such an analogy could be valid. In order to consider and rely on other county experience, clear parallels of some relevant parameters must be depicted between two counties. For example, the driving population, the quality of roads, and the road size of the counties must be somewhat similar. For all we know from the editorial, the line width of the Prunty County could be already broad enough or the county has(had?) recently underwent the complete renewal of the roads, making the author's suggestion potently irrelevant.
Highway safety is a major concern and must be dealt with thoroughness and attention. However, the author does little to provide evidence that his suggestions will lead to any improvements, making the argument sound specious and unfounded.
The argument might have been strengthened by the detailed accidents report from Prunty County and Butler Count for the past several years and the overall description of the quality of roads, drivers density at the highways, and citizens complaints and desires regarding the highways reforms.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- not OK. Maybe the speed limit policy worked very well. Other factors like bad weather those days have caused the accident rate going up.
argument 3 -- OK
----------------
flaws:
Don't need two conclusion paragraphs
read a sample:
http://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-essays/following-appeared-editorial-prun…
-----------------------
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 440 350
No. of Characters: 2236 1500
No. of Different Words: 220 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.58 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.082 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.567 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 179 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 129 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 51 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.882 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.838 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.706 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.344 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.612 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.089 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 29, Rule ID: ADMIT_ENJOY_VB[1]
Message: This verb is used with the gerund form: 'suggests restoring'.
Suggestion: suggests restoring
The author of the editorial suggests to restore 55 mph speed limit in Prunty County and...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 62, Rule ID: CD_NN[1]
Message: Possible agreement error. The noun 'limit' seems to be countable, so consider using: 'limits'.
Suggestion: limits
...torial suggests to restore 55 mph speed limit in Prunty County and undertake the simi...
^^^^^
Line 5, column 91, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma
Suggestion: , ?
...afety could be suggested and implemented,? the thorough research must be conducted...
^^
Line 5, column 94, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: The
...ty could be suggested and implemented,? the thorough research must be conducted on ...
^^^
Line 7, column 611, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: Recently
...eady broad enough or the county hashad? recently underwent the complete renewal of the r...
^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 676, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...mplete renewal of the roads, making the authors suggestion potently irrelevant. High...
^^^^^^^
Discourse Markers used:
['but', 'finally', 'first', 'however', 'if', 'may', 'moreover', 'regarding', 'second', 'so', 'then', 'while', 'for example', 'first of all']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.279260780287 0.25644967241 109% => OK
Verbs: 0.154004106776 0.15541462614 99% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0698151950719 0.0836205057962 83% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0451745379877 0.0520304965353 87% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0123203285421 0.0272364105082 45% => OK
Prepositions: 0.0985626283368 0.125424944231 79% => OK
Participles: 0.0595482546201 0.0416121511921 143% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.69667893001 2.79052419416 97% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0225872689938 0.026700313972 85% => OK
Particles: 0.00205338809035 0.001811407834 113% => OK
Determiners: 0.131416837782 0.113004496875 116% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0328542094456 0.0255425247493 129% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.00205338809035 0.0127820249294 16% => Some subClauses wanted starting by 'Which, Who, What, Whom, Whose.....'
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2747.0 2731.13054187 101% => OK
No of words: 439.0 446.07635468 98% => OK
Chars per words: 6.25740318907 6.12365571057 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.57737117129 4.57801047555 100% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.425968109339 0.378187486979 113% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.30979498861 0.287650121315 108% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.211845102506 0.208842608468 101% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.129840546697 0.135150697306 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.69667893001 2.79052419416 97% => OK
Unique words: 231.0 207.018472906 112% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.526195899772 0.469332199767 112% => OK
Word variations: 60.6493691949 52.1807786196 116% => OK
How many sentences: 19.0 20.039408867 95% => OK
Sentence length: 23.1052631579 23.2022227129 100% => OK
Sentence length SD: 51.1862061578 57.7814097925 89% => OK
Chars per sentence: 144.578947368 141.986410481 102% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.1052631579 23.2022227129 100% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.736842105263 0.724660767414 102% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.14285714286 117% => OK
Language errors: 6.0 3.58251231527 167% => OK
Readability: 54.0847620189 51.9672348444 104% => OK
Elegance: 2.06796116505 1.8405768891 112% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.399218210631 0.441005458295 91% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.107164525646 0.135418324435 79% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0676620785714 0.0829849096947 82% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.6323682787 0.58762219726 108% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.154684996594 0.147661913831 105% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.177965289591 0.193483328276 92% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0894367384827 0.0970749176394 92% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.431550883549 0.42659136922 101% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.127532845058 0.0774707102158 165% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.264375675881 0.312017818177 85% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.093589161291 0.0698173142475 134% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.33743842365 96% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.87684729064 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.82512315271 124% => OK
Positive topic words: 5.0 6.46551724138 77% => OK
Negative topic words: 5.0 5.36822660099 93% => OK
Neutral topic words: 5.0 2.82389162562 177% => OK
Total topic words: 15.0 14.657635468 102% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
---------------------
Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
---------------------
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.