The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a local newspaper.
"Commuters complain that increased rush-hour traffic on Blue Highway between the suburbs and the city center has doubled their commuting time. The favored proposal of the motorists' lobby is to widen the highway, adding an additional lane of traffic. But last year's addition of a lane to the nearby Green Highway was followed by a worsening of traffic jams on it. A better alternative is to add a bicycle lane to Blue Highway. Many area residents are keen bicyclists. A bicycle lane would encourage them to use bicycles to commute, and so would reduce rush-hour traffic rather than fostering an increase."
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 argument.
The author of the argument asserts that in order to decrease rush-hour traffic on Blue Highway between the downtown and the rural areas, a bicycle lane must be added. While the suggestion may sound plausible, the argument relies on false parallels and unproven assumptions and, also, omits certain relevant information.
First of all, the author assumes that the untoward experience of adding a line to the nearby Green Highway may be applicable to the Blue Highway as well. As it stated in the passage, widening of Green Highway only led to increased traffic. However, the author fails to consider other possible explanations. There may have been an influx of suburbs' citizens which led to the worsening of traffic jams even with the additional line, or the overall quality of the road has led to slow traffic on the highway. With that in mind, the author can not base his argument on this particular example without elaborating on the reasons why Green Highway initiative didn't work.
Second, the author states that better solution to the rush-hour traffic problem would be to add a bicycle line to Blue Highway. Indeed, as it mentioned in the newsletter, many residents are fond of bicycling and ,hence, they could be considered as a potential users of the added line. Yet, the author never mentions the distance between the suburbs and the city center. It could take people more than two hours to get to the downtown riding a bicycle. It's easy to imagine that in this case not many citizens would be interested in using bicycles to commute.
Finally, the author suggestion can lead to worsening the situation instead of helping it. If the useless bicycle line is added, there will be less space for the car lines which can lead to increased traffic. Moreover, using this line might even be dangerous, if the highway road in bad state. Simple suggestions, like adding a carpool line could encourage people to carpool together and can lead to decrease in traffic.
To conclude, the argument doesn't seem cogent at all. The newsletter lacks important information like the quality of the roads and the author makes only a tenuous link between the facts and his suggestion. Additionally, more simple and basic ideas may lead to better results.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- somehow duplicated to argument 2. Need to find the root causes why there are increased rush-hour traffic on Blue Highway between the suburbs and the city center. The way which doesn't work on Green Highway may work on Blue Highway.
----------------
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: 381 350
No. of Characters: 1819 1500
No. of Different Words: 194 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.418 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.774 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.468 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 130 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 104 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 58 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 35 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.053 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.28 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.526 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.318 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.543 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.037 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 6, column 654, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: didn't
...he reasons why Green Highway initiative didnt work. Second, the author states tha...
^^^^^
Line 8, column 212, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma, but not before the comma
Suggestion: ,
...many residents are fond of bicycling and ,hence, they could be considered as a pot...
^^
Line 8, column 261, Rule ID: A_PLURAL[2]
Message: Don't use indefinite articles with plural words. Did you mean 'user'?
Suggestion: user
...they could be considered as a potential users of the added line. Yet, the author neve...
^^^^^
Line 12, column 27, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
... traffic. To conclude, the argument doesnt seem cogent at all. The newsletter lack...
^^^^^^
Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'finally', 'first', 'hence', 'however', 'if', 'may', 'moreover', 'second', 'so', 'well', 'while', 'first of all']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.260047281324 0.25644967241 101% => OK
Verbs: 0.137115839243 0.15541462614 88% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0874704491726 0.0836205057962 105% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0425531914894 0.0520304965353 82% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0189125295508 0.0272364105082 69% => OK
Prepositions: 0.106382978723 0.125424944231 85% => OK
Participles: 0.0354609929078 0.0416121511921 85% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.57116708804 2.79052419416 92% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0472813238771 0.026700313972 177% => OK
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.125295508274 0.113004496875 111% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0378250591017 0.0255425247493 148% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.00709219858156 0.0127820249294 55% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2285.0 2731.13054187 84% => OK
No of words: 382.0 446.07635468 86% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.98167539267 6.12365571057 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.42095241839 4.57801047555 97% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.36387434555 0.378187486979 96% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.29057591623 0.287650121315 101% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.183246073298 0.208842608468 88% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.0994764397906 0.135150697306 74% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.57116708804 2.79052419416 92% => OK
Unique words: 199.0 207.018472906 96% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.520942408377 0.469332199767 111% => OK
Word variations: 57.1262936984 52.1807786196 109% => OK
How many sentences: 19.0 20.039408867 95% => OK
Sentence length: 20.1052631579 23.2022227129 87% => OK
Sentence length SD: 42.8318234138 57.7814097925 74% => OK
Chars per sentence: 120.263157895 141.986410481 85% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.1052631579 23.2022227129 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.684210526316 0.724660767414 94% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 3.58251231527 112% => OK
Readability: 49.1628547809 51.9672348444 95% => OK
Elegance: 2.02380952381 1.8405768891 110% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.579330699946 0.441005458295 131% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.0910081256236 0.135418324435 67% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0586861423552 0.0829849096947 71% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.571692841011 0.58762219726 97% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.13832051279 0.147661913831 94% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.253898392328 0.193483328276 131% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.138862312335 0.0970749176394 143% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.457949440646 0.42659136922 107% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.081438900737 0.0774707102158 105% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.427168442232 0.312017818177 137% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0773832794469 0.0698173142475 111% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.33743842365 108% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.87684729064 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.82512315271 41% => OK
Positive topic words: 8.0 6.46551724138 124% => OK
Negative topic words: 8.0 5.36822660099 149% => OK
Neutral topic words: 2.0 2.82389162562 71% => OK
Total topic words: 18.0 14.657635468 123% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
---------------------
Rates: 70.83 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.25 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: This is not the final score. 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.