1. Woven baskets characterized by a particular distinctive pattern have previously been found only in the immediate vicinity of the prehistoric village of Palea and therefore were believed to have been made only by the Palean people. Recently, however, archaeologists discovered such a "Palean" basket in Lithos, an ancient village across the Brim River from Palea. The Brim River is very deep and broad, and so the ancient Paleans could have crossed it only by boat, and no Palean boats have been found. Thus it follows that the so-called Palean baskets were not uniquely Palean.
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.
In this argument, the author concludes that Lalean baskets were not uniquely Palean, but also were made people in Lithos. To bolster the argument, the author points out that those baskets found in Lithos were not carried by Paleans. However, unless the author provides more convincing evidence to back the argument, it does not hold water.
First, the author mentions the Brim River between Palea and Lithos is very deep and broad, thus ancient residents could only cross the river by boat. However, the author fails to provide any evidence to support the assumption. Perhaps, ancient Palean lived more than 5000 years ago, and terrain and landscape has changed a lot during 5000 years. Maybe because of climate warming, the glaciers in the root of the river have melted a lot and the volume of the Brim River has increased dramatically in recent years. Therefore, in ancient times, the Brim River may be very small and ancient people including Paleans can easily crossed the river without any auxiliary instrument. To back the assumption, in a conclusion, the author should provide more information about the feature of the river in ancient times.
Second, even if the Brim River remained deep and broad thousands of years, the statement that ancient Paleans could have crossed it only by boat is unjustifiable. It is possible that ancient Paleans built a bridge to cross the river. Or it is likely that the downstream of the Brim River was relatively shallow and was easy to cross, Paleans just detoured to the downstream where was not much far from their village to cross the river and to trade with residents living in Lithos. Thus, without additional information of the way that Paleans crossed the river, it is difficult to access the merit of this statement.
Third, the author indicates that because Palean could only cross the river by boat and no Palean boats have been found there, Palean never crossed the river carrying Lalean baskets to Lithos. But the argument is unwarranted. Because made by ancient people were mostly made by wood which could hardly be preserved for more than a hundred years, no Palean boats can be found now no matter Paleans made boats to cross the river or not. In conclusion, in order to better bolster the recommendation, I would need more detailed information involving more reasonable evidence of boat making.
In a nutshell, the argument is unconvincing as it lack specific evidence. Therefore, if the argument had included the given factors discussed above, it would have been more logically acceptable.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
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: 426 350
No. of Characters: 2071 1500
No. of Different Words: 186 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.543 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.862 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.406 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 147 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 106 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 60 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 38 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.421 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.338 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.579 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.362 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.585 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.128 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 624, Rule ID: DID_BASEFORM[1]
Message: The verb 'can' requires the base form of the verb: 'cross'
Suggestion: cross
...ent people including Paleans can easily crossed the river without any auxiliary instrum...
^^^^^^^
Line 17, column 51, Rule ID: IT_VBZ[1]
Message: Did you mean 'lacks'?
Suggestion: lacks
...ell, the argument is unconvincing as it lack specific evidence. Therefore, if the ar...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, may, second, so, therefore, third, thus, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2142.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 426.0 441.139720559 97% => OK
Chars per words: 5.02816901408 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.54310108192 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.51831878668 2.78398813304 90% => OK
Unique words: 195.0 204.123752495 96% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.457746478873 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 650.7 705.55239521 92% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 9.0 4.22255489022 213% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.1155451635 57.8364921388 87% => OK
Chars per sentence: 112.736842105 119.503703932 94% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.4210526316 23.324526521 96% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.47368421053 5.70786347227 78% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.153933486913 0.218282227539 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0530160622996 0.0743258471296 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0522946812271 0.0701772020484 75% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0969718726439 0.128457276422 75% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0354821339712 0.0628817314937 56% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.5 14.3799401198 94% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 57.61 48.3550499002 119% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.19 12.5979740519 97% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.03 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 89.0 98.500998004 90% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 7.5 12.3882235529 61% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => 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.