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 personal director in his recommendation claims that there a great advantage for Acme Publishing Company to take Easy Read course, although he failed to present strong arguments to support this point of view. Thus, based on the fact presented in the recommendation, we cannot be sure that the company will benefit a lot.
By saying that this course will bring advantages to the company, the author connects this with the fact that employers will be more productive. It is unclear, however, whether these aspects are correlated. For example, increased performance of workers will not lead to great gains, because they are currently hard-working people who do their tasks quickly. We are unfamiliar with any information about the level of employee performance. There are no evidences that workers are low-productive and face problems with performing their tasks. Thus, this course will not bring benefits to Acme Publishing Company.
Additionally, from the text above we can conclude that the main purpose of course is to teach people to read faster. From this, the question whether the company should pay money for this course is obscure. Perhaps, the employers at Acme Publishing Company do not need read faster, because the corpus of information to absorb is not great. For example, employees use computers to find and process information quickly, and they do not work with the great amount of data. Hence, it is better to investigate whether workers are needed to read faster or this ability is not primary.
As a complement, the author mentions that this course will cost only $500 per employee that, in his opinion, is not much money for the company. Although, we cannot rely on this assumption without any further details. We are not aware about the financial situation of the company, its incomes as well as how many employees it has. For example, the company has tough times and cannot afford extra outlays. Moreover, the number of workers can be great that Acme Publishing Company’s budget will be affected. In this turn, the company will not be able to pay salaries on the same level, which will lead to the reduction of performance, not the growth.
To sum up, based on the arguments provided in the essay, we cannot rely on this recommendation and claim that this course will bring benefits to Acme Publishing Company.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
None of the arguments are exactly correct. In GRE, we have to accept all data or evidence are true. It is important to find out loopholes behind surveys or studies. Loopholes mean that we accept all surveys/data told are true, but there are some conditions applied, for example:
It works for time A (10 years ago), but it doesn't mean it works for time B (nowadays).
It works for location A (a city, community, nation), but it doesn't mean it works for location B (another city, community, nation).
It works for people A (a manager), but it doesn't mean it works for people B (a worker).
It works for event A (one event, project... ), but it doesn't mean it works for event B (another event, project...).
It works for A and B, but not C.
...etc
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Let's analyze the structure of the statement and argue accordingly:
condition 1:
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. //1. it works for many other companies, it doesn't mean it will work for all companies or this company. 2. the samples are too small.
condition 2:
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. //suppose the company has 1000 employees, it is still a big money: 1000X$500 = $500,000 2. seminar and newsletter may not be useful
conclusion:
Clearly, Acme would benefit greatly by requiring all of our employees to take the Easy Read course.//maybe only some of employees need the course
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 20 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 389 350
No. of Characters: 1891 1500
No. of Different Words: 186 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.441 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.861 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.59 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 133 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 101 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 58 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.45 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.591 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.55 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.322 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.513 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.117 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 129, Rule ID: WHETHER[5]
Message: Can you shorten this phrase to just 'whether', or rephrase the sentence to avoid "the question"?
Suggestion: whether
...teach people to read faster. From this, the question whether the company should pay money for this c...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 269, Rule ID: NEEDNT_TO_DO_AND_DONT_NEED_DO[3]
Message: Did you mean 'to read'?
Suggestion: to read
... at Acme Publishing Company do not need read faster, because the corpus of informati...
^^^^
Line 7, column 144, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “Although” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...ion, is not much money for the company. Although, we cannot rely on this assumption with...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
hence, however, moreover, so, thus, well, as to, for example, of course, as well as, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 40.0 28.8173652695 139% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 48.0 55.5748502994 86% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1961.0 2260.96107784 87% => OK
No of words: 389.0 441.139720559 88% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.0411311054 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.44106776838 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.72567046407 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 190.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.488431876607 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 592.2 705.55239521 84% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 36.7864105343 57.8364921388 64% => OK
Chars per sentence: 98.05 119.503703932 82% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.45 23.324526521 83% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.7 5.70786347227 82% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => 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: 0.209074965746 0.218282227539 96% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0692105260427 0.0743258471296 93% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.054972262903 0.0701772020484 78% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.133138361807 0.128457276422 104% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0354521113536 0.0628817314937 56% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.0 14.3799401198 83% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 60.65 48.3550499002 125% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.5 12.197005988 78% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.95 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.03 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 85.0 98.500998004 86% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.