Essay topics: The following is a recommendation from the personnel director to the president of Acme Publishing Company.
"Many other companies have recently stated that having their employees take the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course has greatly improved productivity. One graduate of the course was able to read a 500-page report in only two hours; another graduate rose from an assistant manager to vice president of the company in under a year. Obviously, the faster you can read, the more information you can absorb in a single workday. Moreover, Easy Read would cost Acme only $500 per employee — a small price to pay when you consider the benefits.Included in this fee is a three-week seminar in Spruce City and a lifelong subscription to the Easy Read newsletter.Clearly, Acme would benefit greatly by requiring all of our employees to take the Easy Read course."
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 letter of recommendation asserts that all employees of Acme corporation be mandated to participate in the easy read speed course as it will improve the productivity of the corporation, based on the result from many other companies that the course has greatly enhanced the output of her employees. However, before this recommendation can be properly evaluated, three questions must be answered.
First of all, is there a guarantee that this easy read sped course which worked for other company employees, will work for Acme employees? Just because there is a positive output in many other companies does not necessarily assure the same result for Acme corporation. Perhaps, the two graduates who benefited from the course were merely smart and hardworking people i their various spheres of life. For instance, a company sent about 10 of its employees on a course, where they had to take a test at the end of the course and only 3 persons passed the course. Such can be the case of this speed course. Maybe the 2 employees were the best in the company. If the above stated is true, then the argument does not hold water.
Secondly, does the author think that because an employee was able to read through a 500 page report in two hours, that he assimiliated all he read? There is a possibility that the person who read the 500 page report simply flipped through the pages of the report that fast because he had a deadline to meet up, hence he hastily scanned through the report. If the scenario has merit, then the conclusion drawn in the original document is significantly weakened.
Thirdly, the management of Acme assumes that because the cost for the easy read speed course is a small amount, considering that the seminar is just for a period of three weeks and the participants will be entitled to a life long subscription to read newsletters, that spending such an amount on each of its employees will at the long run be beneficial to the corporation. On the contrary, this might not be the case. Maybe, spending $500 per employee will not be a good idea, bearing in mind that not all persons who participate in the program will turn out like the graduate who could read 500 pages in two hours or the other one who rose from an assistant manager to the vice president of a company under one year. If either of these is the case, then the original argument is substantially flawed.
In conclusion, the argument, as it stands now is considerably flawed due to its dependence on baseless assumptions. If the author is able to answer the three questions and more information about the course before delving into it, then it will be possible to fully evaluate the feasibility of the proposed recommendation that all employees take part in the seminar.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
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: 18 15
No. of Words: 480 350
No. of Characters: 2228 1500
No. of Different Words: 214 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.681 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.642 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.657 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 144 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 105 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 74 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 47 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.667 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 16.776 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.305 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.525 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.075 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, hence, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, third, thirdly, for instance, in conclusion, first of all, on the contrary
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 32.0 28.8173652695 111% => OK
Preposition: 61.0 55.5748502994 110% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2292.0 2260.96107784 101% => OK
No of words: 480.0 441.139720559 109% => OK
Chars per words: 4.775 5.12650576532 93% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.68069463864 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.73849867628 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 230.0 204.123752495 113% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.479166666667 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 709.2 705.55239521 101% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 93.5788437629 57.8364921388 162% => OK
Chars per sentence: 127.333333333 119.503703932 107% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.6666666667 23.324526521 114% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.44444444444 5.70786347227 130% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.24819667214 0.218282227539 114% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0736915392588 0.0743258471296 99% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.074009442448 0.0701772020484 105% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.143406193185 0.128457276422 112% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.076187876592 0.0628817314937 121% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.4 14.3799401198 100% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 53.55 48.3550499002 111% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.74 12.5979740519 85% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.02 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 94.0 98.500998004 95% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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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.