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 specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument
The author suggests that all colleges and universities should adopt honor codes similar to Groveton’s in order to decrease cheating among students However, readers need further proof to verify the argument offered by the author.
The author claims that cheating among college and university students is on the rise according to a recent report. However, we must know if this report is reliable enough to believe. If this report is just students’ homework, it may not be a reliable data, because students may not use rigorous methods to evaluate the situation. Moreover, students may just use Excel model to address their data instead of utilizing some advanced statistics software to generate this report. Thus, the accuracy of this report is highly suspect. Therefore, the author must more solid information about how this report is finished and where are its data from.
The author states that the number of cheating students is on the rise. Yet, we must know how many the exact total of cheating students is. If there are only three more students cheating on the exams per year, then it is not a handsome amount of increase. Furthermore, if there are ten more students cheating on the exams than last year, however, the base number of students increases about two thousand, then the percentage of cheating students is still not a huge increase. Thus, we must understand how many students cheating on the exams has increased, or the author can also provide us with the increased percentage of cheating students.
The author points out that the figure of cheating students has dropped to fourteen. Still, we must know if these students will honestly report other students cheating on the exams. It is possible that when there were some students cheating on the exams, other students would not report this fact to maintain their friendship. On the contrary, if these students report to the teachers that other students cheating on the exams, they may get some bonus points as their rewards. However, if other cheating students know that there are some students betraying them, these students may take some actions to revenge. Thus, the author must provide more solid information which can ensure that these students will report the cheating events honestly.
The author mentions that all colleges and universities should adopt honor code similar to Groveton’s in order to decrease cheating among students. However, we need to know if other schools can also get the same result as Groveton College. If other colleges has more than ten thousand students it may not be easy to fulfill this plan, or if other schools have fewer students cheating on the exams than Groveton College. It is possible that other schools have conducted a better system which can decrease cheating among students. Therefore, the author must provide more information about other schools methods to deal with cheating among students.
This honor code system may somewhat improve the situation of cheating among students. However, the author still need to provide more information to strengthen his argument.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 25 15
No. of Words: 504 350
No. of Characters: 2518 1500
No. of Different Words: 183 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.738 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.996 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.377 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 190 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 149 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 114 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 27 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.16 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.001 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.72 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.428 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.618 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.267 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, furthermore, honestly, however, if, may, moreover, so, still, then, therefore, thus, on the contrary
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 26.0 12.9520958084 201% => Less auxiliary verb wanted.
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 40.0 28.8173652695 139% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 55.0 55.5748502994 99% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 16.3942115768 49% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2598.0 2260.96107784 115% => OK
No of words: 504.0 441.139720559 114% => OK
Chars per words: 5.15476190476 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.73813722054 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.491962388 2.78398813304 90% => OK
Unique words: 191.0 204.123752495 94% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.378968253968 0.468620217663 81% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 782.1 705.55239521 111% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 11.0 4.96107784431 222% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 44.4522215418 57.8364921388 77% => OK
Chars per sentence: 103.92 119.503703932 87% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.16 23.324526521 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.24 5.70786347227 74% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 15.0 6.88822355289 218% => Less negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.457659674802 0.218282227539 210% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.175910123676 0.0743258471296 237% => Sentence topic similarity is high.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.112343653028 0.0701772020484 160% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.262192395347 0.128457276422 204% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.076267001047 0.0628817314937 121% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.9 14.3799401198 90% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.59 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.39 8.32208582834 89% => OK
difficult_words: 88.0 98.500998004 89% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 Out of 6
---------------------
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.