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.
I understand the argument and recommendation but in my opinion without solid clarifications the recommendation could not be taken seriosly. There are some weak points that make those argument falls apart.
We can see that after replacing the old system by the honor code the nubmer of cheating cases decreased from thirty to twenty one and after five years even to fourteen but we can not be sure that it was caused by changing the system. Firstly, it might be that exams started to be more structured and students can understand them easily or for example the minimum grade to pass became lower and students don’t have the reason to cheat that much. Secondly, we can not be sure that students report maximum of all witnessed cheating actions because they might be friends and want to keep these relationships.
Atlhout, I think it is important to mention that without knowing more details of survey we can not rely on this results. Who were questioned? What if it were people that have always cheated before and were caugheted by teachers and now they would do this easily because they know that their friends would not report them?
The last but not the least is the fact that all places are different. All cultures are different. Some places will value relationship more than the system. In those places it will not work at all. I think it demands a larger analysis of the college or university before we can make a conclusion about should we change the old system or we should not.
Taking all previous facts in mind I can conclude that this argument should clarify those moments before make this broadcast recommendation otherwise we can end up in a society where the level of cheating among the students only become bigger.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 302 350
No. of Characters: 1407 1500
No. of Different Words: 166 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.169 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.659 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.487 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 96 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 64 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 40 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 21 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.571 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.319 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.571 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.323 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.604 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.192 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 120, Rule ID: EN_COMPOUNDS
Message: This word is normally spelled with hyphen.
Suggestion: twenty-one
...cheating cases decreased from thirty to twenty one and after five years even to fourteen b...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 108, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[1]
Message: Did you mean 'these'?
Suggestion: these
...re details of survey we can not rely on this results. Who were questioned? What if ...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, if, second, secondly, so, for example, i think, in my opinion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 44.0 28.8173652695 153% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 32.0 55.5748502994 58% => More preposition wanted.
Nominalization: 7.0 16.3942115768 43% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1454.0 2260.96107784 64% => OK
No of words: 301.0 441.139720559 68% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.83056478405 5.12650576532 94% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.16525528304 4.56307096286 91% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.55589494658 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 164.0 204.123752495 80% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.544850498339 0.468620217663 116% => OK
syllable_count: 445.5 705.55239521 63% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 1.0 8.76447105788 11% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 74.5401206857 57.8364921388 129% => OK
Chars per sentence: 103.857142857 119.503703932 87% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.5 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.85714285714 5.70786347227 103% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => 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: 0.155281914173 0.218282227539 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0423027090315 0.0743258471296 57% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0554675539641 0.0701772020484 79% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0730051805159 0.128457276422 57% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0617084714684 0.0628817314937 98% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.1 14.3799401198 84% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 48.3550499002 121% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.73 12.5979740519 85% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.72 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 58.0 98.500998004 59% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => 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: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.