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.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation
The argument concludes that all the universities and colleges should espouse the honor code followed by the Groveton college to decrease cheating among students. However, it reveals several instances of poor reasoning and ill-defined terminology. To justify his argument, the author mentioned the decreased number of cheating cases detected under the new system and also mentioned a survey conducted among the students of Groveton. Nonetheless, careful scrutiny of the evidence reveals that it provides little tenable support for the author’s inferences. Hence the argument is incomplete and has many questions unanswered.
The argument mentioned that under the new honour code students are supposed to report the cheating cases to the teachers instead of teachers monitoring the students and concluded that it has helped reduce the cheating cases in Groveton. The author corroborated this statement by mentioning the decreasing number of cheating cases reported under the new system. It might be the case that students fail to report the cheating cases to their teachers and that there is no decrease in the cheating cases among the students. Infact, it might be easier for the students to cheat as there is no teacher monitoring them. The argument failed to understand this aspect and hence to really understand the decrease in cheating cases with the new system in place, a better analysis instead of what is provided in the argument is needed.
Furthermore, the argument mentioned a survey conducted among Graveton’s students in which the majority of the students said that they are less likely to cheat in exams under an honor system in place than without. The students might have not answered the survey honestly. They must have answered in accordance with what is acceptable by society. Hence if the survey shows that there is a chance of biases in it then relying on such a survey to derive conclusions will not be appropriate. The argument failed to consider all that.
Lastly, what worked for Groveton college might not work for other institutes and universities. This is because the students and the rules and regulations for every college will be different. This new honour code will allow students of another college to copy easily. So, it would be unwise to conclude that the new honour system might work for all the colleges.
To sum up what has been stated so far, the author's argument is unpersuasive as it stands. To bolster it further, more detailed analysis is required
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 406 350
No. of Characters: 2051 1500
No. of Different Words: 175 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.489 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.052 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.612 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 163 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 122 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 99 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 38 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.333 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.296 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.524 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.314 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.314 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.088 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 494, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...scrutiny of the evidence reveals that it provides little tenable support for the ...
^^
Line 1, column 557, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...le support for the author’s inferences. Hence the argument is incomplete and has many...
^^^^^
Line 3, column 168, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...t they are less likely to cheat in exams under an honor system in place than with...
^^
Line 3, column 347, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...nce with what is acceptable by society. Hence if the survey shows that there is a cha...
^^^^^
Line 5, column 44, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...sum up what has been stated so far, the authors argument is unpersuasive as it stands. ...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 148, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ther, more detailed analysis is required
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, furthermore, hence, honestly, however, if, lastly, nonetheless, really, so, then, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 52.0 55.5748502994 94% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2094.0 2260.96107784 93% => OK
No of words: 406.0 441.139720559 92% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.15763546798 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.48881294772 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.70686853686 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 178.0 204.123752495 87% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.43842364532 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 655.2 705.55239521 93% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 55.3786389395 57.8364921388 96% => OK
Chars per sentence: 99.7142857143 119.503703932 83% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.3333333333 23.324526521 83% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.61904761905 5.70786347227 81% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 6.0 5.25449101796 114% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.34465238915 0.218282227539 158% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.103775101739 0.0743258471296 140% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.101006411756 0.0701772020484 144% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.171889716048 0.128457276422 134% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0927063221767 0.0628817314937 147% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.5 14.3799401198 87% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.65 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.16 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 92.0 98.500998004 93% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => 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.