The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Balmer Island Gazette."On Balmer Island, where mopeds serve as a popular form of transportation, the population increases to 100,000 during the summer months. To reduce the number of accidents involv

Essay topics:

The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Balmer Island Gazette.

"On Balmer Island, where mopeds serve as a popular form of transportation, the population increases to 100,000 during the summer months. To reduce the number of accidents involving mopeds and pedestrians, the town council of Balmer Island should limit the number of mopeds rented by the island's moped rental companies from 50 per day to 25 per day during the summer season. By limiting the number of rentals, the town council will attain the 50 percent annual reduction in moped accidents that was achieved last year on the neighboring island of Seaville, when Seaville's town council enforced similar limits on moped rentals."

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.

Submitted by prep on Thu, 05/21/2015 - 01:07

The author has suggested an approach to reduce the number of accidents involving mopeds and pedestrians on Balmer Island by limiting the number of rentals. The author has mentioned that this analogous strategy was adopted by Seaville town council and it helped the to reduce the number of accidents. However, the author has not provided enough information so it is not very convincing to limit the number of rentals for reducing the accidents.

The author has not provided any evidence that the accidents are caused due to increase number of mopeds. It may be possible that the accidents are caused because of lack of management by traffic police or due to lack of coordination of traffic signals. The author should look upon these points and see what the root cause of accidents is. If they are caused by lack of management by traffic police then author should complain to the respective officer and ask them to increase the number of police officials to control the traffic. Accidents can also be avoided by allocating one traffic police at each signal so that he can control the situation immediately if there is any sort of lack of co-ordination in traffic.

Another point suggested by author is that the town council should limit the number of mopeds rented by the rental companies and reduce it to 50 percent. Though it may reduce the number of accidents, but the author has not provided enough information about the negative effects of implementing this strategy. Reducing rentals to 50 percent might cause a huge loss to rental companies and this will affect a lot of people working there. It will affect not just the rental companies but also the people working there and may unfortunately result in unemployment. So, the author should properly check the consequences of limiting the number of rentals because unemployment may cause a severe problem to town.

Author has mentioned that this similar strategy of limiting the rentals was enforced by neighboring island. But there is no evidence that Seaville reduced the number of rentals to limit the number of accidents. It may be possible that the rental companies at Seaville might be facing crises and might not be able to afford more mopeds. This might have made them to reduce the number of rentals and eventually the accidents. So, author should gain additional information about these factors.

Thus, we can see that author has not provided enough information so it is not convincing to limit the number of mopeds rented by the island's moped rental companies. It would have been easier to take decision if the author might have provided enough information about the root cause of accident or the reason for which Seaville reduced the number of rentals in their town.

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Essay Categories
GMAT/GRE Argument Task

Comments

Though it may reduce the number of accidents, but the author
Description: don't put 'though' 'but' in one sentence.

argument 1 -- not OK.

argument 2 -- not OK. It is out of topic.

argument 3 -- not OK.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: ? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 1 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 461 350
No. of Characters: 2244 1500
No. of Different Words: 166 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.634 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.868 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.573 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 191 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 113 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 77 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 46 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.05 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.461 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.65 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.414 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.588 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.185 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5

argument 1:
you: 'The author has not provided any evidence that the accidents are caused due to increase number of mopeds.', well, need to read the topic carefully: 'To reduce the number of accidents involving mopeds and pedestrians', You can argue that the accidents are not because of mopeds, but because of pedestrians or something related to traffic rules. So it doesn't work to decrease the number of mopeds.

argument 2:
you:'but the author has not provided enough information about the negative effects of implementing this strategy.'. You don't refer something new for 'unemployment'. It is different to GRE issue essays. Need to focus on the topic. read this:

'On Balmer Island, where mopeds serve as a popular form of transportation, the population increases to 100,000 during the summer months'

and this:

'limit the number of mopeds rented by the island's moped rental companies from 50 per day to 25 per day during the summer season. By limiting the number of rentals, the town council will attain the 50 percent annual reduction'

so we can argue: The author has given a figure that the population of Balmer becomes 100,00 in summers, but he hasn't stated the percentage increase in population. So if we are to assume that most of the visitors rent mopeds for transport, there is no evidence to suggest that there is a large percentage of increase in moped rentals during summers; Also people may bring or buy mopeds instead of rental;

And it doesn't mean it will attain the 50 percent annual reduction, may be 30%...

argument 3:
You: ' But there is no evidence that Seaville reduced the number of rentals to limit the number of accidents.'. For any data for the topic, you should accept the data or evidences are true. and then try to find out loopholes.

suggested:
To corroborate his argument, the writer points out the fact that a neighboring village implemented similar plan and it helped them reduce the accident rates by 50 percent. The fact that it worked for Seavile does not mean it will work for Balmer Island. The two communities may not have the same influx and exodus. While mopeds may not be the main source of transportation in Seavile where as it may be the case in Balmer Island. Also, mopeds may be the major source of accident in Seavile whereas in Balmer Island, it is not the case.