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 recommendation by the author that all college and universities should adopt honor code similar is Groveton’s to reduce cheating among students is predicated on flawed assumptions and is insufficiently supported. In order to evaluate the author’s remark on his observation, more evidences are required.
The author begins by mentioning how Groveton college, by adopting an honor code, successfully reduced student cheating, and in the first year, students reported 21 cases of cheating and it eventually dropped to 14 in 5 years. However, there no significant evidence as to what caused the drop. Did students report the correct number of cases of cheating? Perhaps, they stopped reporting many cases because some of them eventually became part of cheating. Therefore, the number of cases in 5 years went down as only few of them remained loyal to the code. Perhaps, did this lead to even more cheating in the 5 years that remained unnoticed and unreported? We sure cannot rely on students’ faithfulness in reporting the cases as per this piece of information suggests.
Moreover, the teachers also closely monitored students under the system and reported average of 30 cases per year. The author doesn’t clearly mention the year the Groveton implemented this scheme. If this scheme was implemented recently, it does not providently support as average number taken for 2 years will seemingly suggest that there was not much drop in the cases, but when the average is taken for more than 10 years, it implies the number of cases to be decreasing per year, thereby clearly suggesting how successful the implementation was and also strengthening the author’s argument.
Additionally, the author states that in a recent survey majority of students said they would less likely to cheat with honor code. This statement is just being reliable on students’ choice of words. As deduced in the previous paragraph, perhaps students found fault and loop holes in the honor code system and therefore seemed to most likely favour the system rather than refuting it because it became easy to cheat with the system in place. How do we know what majority of students surveyed said they are less likely to cheat with honor code in place? There is no mention how many students enrolled into Groveton college per year. These are some questions which are needed to be answered without which the conclusion has less validity with less accurate supporting statements.
While, colleges and universities should adopt honor codes similar to Groveton's in order to decrease cheating among students only if the latter has enough provident information and evidences to back its claim. With the answers to the additional questions as discussed in previous paragraphs, the argument can be properly evaluated.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 11 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 451 350
No. of Characters: 2286 1500
No. of Different Words: 223 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.608 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.069 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.703 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 169 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 131 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 100 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.55 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.181 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.35 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.316 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.541 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.119 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 307, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...servation, more evidences are required. The author begins by mentioning how Grov...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, moreover, so, then, therefore, while, as to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 12.9520958084 46% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 61.0 55.5748502994 110% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2356.0 2260.96107784 104% => OK
No of words: 450.0 441.139720559 102% => OK
Chars per words: 5.23555555556 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.6057793516 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.8114018295 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 229.0 204.123752495 112% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.508888888889 0.468620217663 109% => OK
syllable_count: 722.7 705.55239521 102% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 80.4539619907 57.8364921388 139% => OK
Chars per sentence: 117.8 119.503703932 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.5 23.324526521 96% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.7 5.70786347227 65% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => 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: 0.369762439513 0.218282227539 169% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.12245134448 0.0743258471296 165% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.116280563883 0.0701772020484 166% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.220297103135 0.128457276422 171% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0802930797906 0.0628817314937 128% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.5 14.3799401198 101% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.41 12.5979740519 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.62 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 111.0 98.500998004 113% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.