According to a recent report, cheating among college and university students is on the rise. However, Groveton College has successfully reduced student cheating by adopting an honor code, which calls for students to agree not to cheat in their academic endeavors and to notify a faculty member if they suspect that others have cheated. Groveton's honor code replaced a system in which teachers closely monitored students; under that system, teachers reported an average of thirty cases of cheating per year. In the first year the honor code was in place, students reported twenty-one cases of cheating; five years later, this figure had dropped to fourteen. Moreover, in a recent survey, a majority of Groveton students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without. Thus, all colleges and universities should adopt honor codes similar to Groveton's in order to decrease cheating among students.
The author argues here that adopting an honor code like Groveton college would reduce the number of cheating among other colleges and universities. To support this argument, the author reasons that adopting an honor codes discouraged their students to cheat. However, the argument fails to mention several key factors, on the basis of which it could be evaluated, distorts the benefit of the honor code by providing weak evidence, reveals several instances of poor reasoning. Hence the argument can be considered incomplete or unsubstantiated.
First of all, the argument readily assumes that the other universities follow the grading system like Groveton. This is merely an assumption made without much solid ground. For example Groveton university has paper-based test, while most other universities have computer-based test or online test. It is a nature of paper-based tests, that people easily look their peer's paper and cheat. On top of that, the size of the class varies around the university. Private university usually offers small classroom where only one professor can supervise a test without difficulty. Hence the argument would have been much more convincing if it explicitly stated that how the tests are given to students and difference in the testing environment among different universities.
The author also points out that Groveton students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code. This again is a weak and unsupported claim as it does not prove any clear comparison between earlier monitoring system and a newly adopted honor code. To illustrate further, students might agree that a new honor code discourage them to cheat, but it might be the case that old professor-monitoring system is more efficient when preventing students to cheat. If the argument had provided direct comparison between the two systems, then it would have been a lot more convincing to the reader.
Finally, the author notes that the less cheating is reported after adopting a new honor code. However, careful scrutiny of the evidence reveals that it provides little credible support for the author’s conclusion, and raises several skeptical questions. For example, even fewer students get caught while cheating, it might be the case more students cheat without getting caught. Therefore, instead of comparing the number of cheating, the university should hold some standardized tests to compare the changes in performance after adopting an honor code, which can help them to estimate how students honestly study than cheat for test.
In conclusion, the author’s argument is not persuasive as it stands. To better check the argument, it would be necessary to know more information about testing environment and tangible benefit of adopting new honor code like standardized test score.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 443 350
No. of Characters: 2315 1500
No. of Different Words: 222 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.588 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.226 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.737 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 168 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 134 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 95 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.095 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.217 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.714 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.318 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.518 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.082 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 477, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...ls several instances of poor reasoning. Hence the argument can be considered incomple...
^^^^^
Line 4, column 573, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...an supervise a test without difficulty. Hence the argument would have been much more ...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, hence, honestly, however, if, look, so, then, therefore, while, for example, in conclusion, first of all, on top of that
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 30.0 28.8173652695 104% => OK
Preposition: 46.0 55.5748502994 83% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2393.0 2260.96107784 106% => OK
No of words: 443.0 441.139720559 100% => OK
Chars per words: 5.40180586907 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.58776254615 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.8561629935 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 230.0 204.123752495 113% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.519187358916 0.468620217663 111% => OK
syllable_count: 745.2 705.55239521 106% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 52.2244415025 57.8364921388 90% => OK
Chars per sentence: 113.952380952 119.503703932 95% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.0952380952 23.324526521 90% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.0 5.70786347227 123% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.367219338073 0.218282227539 168% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.109060472637 0.0743258471296 147% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.107624044209 0.0701772020484 153% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.211405025659 0.128457276422 165% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.111133683603 0.0628817314937 177% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.6 14.3799401198 102% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 41.7 48.3550499002 86% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.04 12.5979740519 111% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.21 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 99.0 98.500998004 101% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.