The following appeared in a letter to the school board in the town of Centerville.
"All students should be required to take the driver's education course at Centerville High School. In the past two years, several accidents in and around Centerville have involved teenage drivers. Since a number of parents in Centerville have complained that they are too busy to teach their teenagers to drive, some other instruction is necessary to ensure that these teenagers are safe drivers. Although there are two driving schools in Centerville, parents on a tight budget cannot afford to pay for driving instruction. Therefore an effective and mandatory program sponsored by the high school is the only solution to this serious problem."
The author of the letter recommends a mandatory driver course to be implemented at Centerville High School to solve the conudrum of accidents involving teenage drivers. He further supports his recommendation by apportunating that parents are too occupied to teach their children to drive and lack the funds to afford driving classes for their children. However, in deriving his recommendation, the author has made three unwarranted specious assumptions that have to addressed before the school board decides whether to adopt the recommendation.
Firstly, the author assumes a lack of driving training is the cause of accidents involving teenage drivers. There are a myriad other possibilities that can lead to accidents involving teenage drivers, not just a lack of training. For example, teenagers can be so well-trained that they become complacent and believe their training skills will not be hamper if they drink and drive, leading to more accidents involving teenagers. A mandatory driving class will not solve the problem, instead if the cause of the accident is drunk driving, the appropriate policy might be to increase awareness of the dangers of drunk driving. Further, it could also be that other drivers caused the accident and coincidentally teenage drivers are involved. For example, there might be reckless truck drivers who fell asleep at the wheel and coincidentally impacted cars driven by teenagers. In such a case, a policy limiting hours of truck driving might be more germane. As such, until there is a closer examination of the actual cause of the accidents involving teenagers, a mandatory driving lesson may not be the most apt solution to resolve the issue of accidents involving teenagers.
Secondly, parents and driving schools are assumed to be the only source of driving education. And given that parents are busy and schools are expensive, the students have limited access to driving lessons. This is a myopic assumption which discounts other potential source of driving education. For example, a retired relative might have the requisite time and experience to impart driving skills. Further, there is also the most economical option of private freelance instructors, who can be just as skilled as instructors from driving schools, to choose as an option to educate teenagers on proper driving techniques. As such, given the myriad of other feasible options available, implementing a mandatory driving lesson which will incur significant costs to the school, may not be the appropriate policy to adopt.
Lastly, the author assumes that every family owns a car, as such driving lesson should be mandatory. However, families who are unable to afford driving lessons will likely be unable to afford a car. Further, even if a family can afford a car, they might not own one as they might not see the need for one. Given there is no car in the family, it defeats the purpose of learning driving skills. As such, a mandatory driving lesson might be too costly a solution whereby students who may not be driving will be imparted with unnecessary driving skills.
To sum it up, the solution recommended by the author will have to aptly address the above assumptions before the school board derives their final decision. As of now, the author's argument contains too many flawed reasoning and assumptions, such that the final recommendation does not hold water and requires further evaluation.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 9 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 9 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 551 350
No. of Characters: 2806 1500
No. of Different Words: 232 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.845 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.093 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.744 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 230 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 173 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 99 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 66 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.958 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.883 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.625 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.317 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.525 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.11 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 318, Rule ID: AFFORD_VBG[1]
Message: This verb is used with infinitive: 'to drive'.
Suggestion: to drive
...n to drive and lack the funds to afford driving classes for their children. However, in...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 134, Rule ID: A_PLURAL[2]
Message: Don't use indefinite articles with plural words. Did you mean 'possibility'?
Suggestion: possibility
...enage drivers. There are a myriad other possibilities that can lead to accidents involving te...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 145, Rule ID: AFFORD_VBG[1]
Message: This verb is used with infinitive: 'to drive'.
Suggestion: to drive
...ever, families who are unable to afford driving lessons will likely be unable to afford...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 379, Rule ID: AFFORD_VBG[1]
Message: This verb is used with infinitive: 'to drive'.
Suggestion: to drive
...ily, it defeats the purpose of learning driving skills. As such, a mandatory driving le...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 172, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...es their final decision. As of now, the authors argument contains too many flawed reaso...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, firstly, however, if, incidentally, lastly, may, second, secondly, so, well, for example
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 29.0 19.6327345309 148% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 23.0 12.9520958084 178% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 58.0 55.5748502994 104% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2877.0 2260.96107784 127% => OK
No of words: 551.0 441.139720559 125% => OK
Chars per words: 5.22141560799 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.84493438435 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.83086693367 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 246.0 204.123752495 121% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.446460980036 0.468620217663 95% => OK
syllable_count: 891.9 705.55239521 126% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 45.2858206899 57.8364921388 78% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.875 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.9583333333 23.324526521 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.20833333333 5.70786347227 74% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.155801576496 0.218282227539 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0546338942326 0.0743258471296 74% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.063027084131 0.0701772020484 90% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0977110832221 0.128457276422 76% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.050417107128 0.0628817314937 80% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.6 14.3799401198 102% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.29 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.34 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 126.0 98.500998004 128% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.