The following appeared in a memo from the Board of Directors of Butler Manufacturing During the past year workers at Butler Manufacturing reported 30 percent more on the job accidents than workers at nearby Panoply Industries where the work shifts are one | TOEFL IELTS GMAT GRE SAT ACT PTE ESL

Essay topics:

The following appeared in a memo from the Board of Directors of Butler Manufacturing.
"During the past year, workers at Butler Manufacturing reported 30 percent more on-the-job accidents than workers at nearby Panoply Industries, where the work shifts are one hour shorter than ours. A recent government study reports that fatigue and sleep deprivation among workers are significant contributing factors in many on-the-job accidents. Therefore, we recommend that Butler Manufacturing shorten each of its work shifts by one hour. Shorter shifts will allow Butler to improve its safety record by ensuring that its employees are adequately rested."

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.

In this passage, the author recommends that Butler Manufacturing should shorten its work shifts by one hour, because it would improve its safety level in the process of production. To support his/her claim, the author cites comparison between Butler Manufacturing and Panoply industries and one government study about working accidents. Quite reasonable though such recommendation appears at first glance, there exists several questions regarding the line of his/her claim that requires further analysis. Thus, the author's conclusion could end up being pretty compelling or invalid in the end, depending on the answers to the questions.

To start off, the author's reasoning heavily relies on whether Butler Manufacturing is really worse than Panoply in term of safety operation, a question that is not yet answered. It is likely that workers in Butler Manufacturing might report inaccurate situation of safety status, because they want to deceive for more rest time. Moreover, without additional information to evaluate whether both of two companies possess similar number of employees, it is of equal probability that Butler Manufacturing has much less employee than Panoply so that a relatively higher incidents percentage mightn't represent higher incident number. Both of two aforementioned phenomena could seriously challenge the author's prediction about safety level of two companies and render his/her claim much less advisable. On the contrary, any valid proof that employees in Butler Manufacturing reported the truth or both of two companies have similar employee base could strengthen his/her viewpoint.

Granted that Butler Manufacturing perform worse than Panoply in daily safety and given the fact about government study about relationship between fatigues and safety records, whether shortening shift time in Butler Manufacturing could lead to better safety needs a second look. Behind the author's reasoning lie two critical implications. The first one is that such general study could apply for situation of Butler Manufacturing. The probability that the finished report is based on totally different industrial background could be considered and addressed. Yet, if the author could unequivocally demonstrate that such general reports had collected samples for distinct industries, such as software development and have nothing to do with maufacturing industries, his/her viewpoint will gain more weights.

Furthermore, the second implication is that current working shift time in Butler Manufacturing couldn't provide sufficiently sleeping time for employee. While relatively short shifting time than Panoply might imply that empoloyee in Butler Manufacturing have insufficient sleeping time, the probability that current time schedule could guarantee their sleeping could not be excluded in advance. For example, under current schedule of working shift, Butler Manufacturing already provide employee with 8 hour sleeping and such fatigue is caused by their long commute time. Thus, we have no clues whether just changing shifting time could give them sufficient time for rest. If no, it is unlikely to imagine employee of Butler Manufacturing can reduce their fatigue status. Otherwise, better sleeping status of Butler Manufacturing could be expected, creating further possibility for them to avoid further incidents in daily operation.

Last but not least, while we can acknowledge for a moment about significance in term of working shift time for employee's fatigue status and then safety performance in work, it remains to be seen whether employees in Butler Manufacturing could use such longer time of shifting time for their rest. Because it is of equal possibility that they might use such additional time for further entertainment after work, which in turn deteriorate their sleeping status and then worse their safety records. If so, this is doubtful that just lengthening shifting work and letting employee free schedule private time after work could benefit for improvement of safety records in Butler Manufacturing.

In summary, while short shifts might benefit from less incidents among employees in Butler Manufacturing, this is a conclusion that we cannot derive from the information available in the argument. Furthermore, even if it is, whether such shortening could inevitably lead to immediate safety improvement is still built upon implications, which are open to different probabilities. Only after the aforementioned questions are adequately addressed, can we effectively evaluate such recommendation and reach a logically sound conclusion.

Votes

Essay Categories

GMAT/GRE Argument Task

Comments

Essay evaluations by e-grader

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 516, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...at requires further analysis. Thus, the authors conclusion could end up being pretty co...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 280, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...t inaccurate situation of safety status, because they want to deceive for more re...
^^
Line 3, column 568, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'incidents'' or 'incident's'?
Suggestion: incidents'; incident's
...han Panoply so that a relatively higher incidents percentage mightnt represent higher inc...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 589, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: mightn't
... relatively higher incidents percentage mightnt represent higher incident number. Both ...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 698, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...phenomena could seriously challenge the authors prediction about safety level of two co...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 96, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: couldn't
...king shift time in Butler Manufacturing couldnt provide sufficiently sleeping time for ...
^^^^^^^
Line 11, column 51, Rule ID: FEWER_LESS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'fewer'? The noun incidents is countable.
Suggestion: fewer
..., while short shifts might benefit from less incidents among employees in Butler Man...
^^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, furthermore, if, look, moreover, really, regarding, second, so, still, then, thus, while, for example, in summary, such as, on the contrary

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

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 25.0 12.9520958084 193% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 53.0 28.8173652695 184% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 79.0 55.5748502994 142% => OK
Nominalization: 22.0 16.3942115768 134% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3915.0 2260.96107784 173% => OK
No of words: 680.0 441.139720559 154% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.75735294118 5.12650576532 112% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.10654576214 4.56307096286 112% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.00870672823 2.78398813304 108% => OK
Unique words: 312.0 204.123752495 153% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.458823529412 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 1202.4 705.55239521 170% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.59920159681 113% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 10.0 2.70958083832 369% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 26.0 19.7664670659 132% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 58.8151753553 57.8364921388 102% => OK
Chars per sentence: 150.576923077 119.503703932 126% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.1538461538 23.324526521 112% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.80769230769 5.70786347227 102% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 7.0 5.25449101796 133% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 17.0 8.20758483034 207% => Less positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.229561582648 0.218282227539 105% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0776067350136 0.0743258471296 104% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0557011742611 0.0701772020484 79% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.131730391293 0.128457276422 103% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0437736486005 0.0628817314937 70% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.8 14.3799401198 131% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 28.17 48.3550499002 58% => Flesch_reading_ease is low.
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.8 12.197005988 130% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 16.42 12.5979740519 130% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.64 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 160.0 98.500998004 162% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 16.0 11.9071856287 134% => OK
What are above readability scores?

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Write the essay in 30 minutes.

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.

Essay evaluations by e-grader

Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, furthermore, if, look, moreover, really, regarding, second, so, still, then, thus, while, for example, in summary, such as, on the contrary

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