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 prompt narrates a circumstance, that a college had decreased cheating by implementing an honor code, and further argued that this is a facile and effective way for other schools to adopt. Although the example of Groveton College seems effective and persuasive, numerous questions should be answered in prior to the other academics to follow.
First, the validity of reported cases of cheating before, and after adopting the honor code is challenged. The argument should answer how to ensure the cases of cheating reported is actually all the cheating cases occurred. It is likely that, after the honor code had implemented, students tend to cooperate with each other to cheat with their classmates instead of reporting to faculty members, therefore decreased the reported cases. Also, unless solid evidences are on the table, the argument should provide ways to make sure how to prevent misreport from the students themselves. Unless all the cheating cases are all correctly reported, the number of cases is far from valid to compare.
Also, the argument should demonstrate how the survey is made. It is apparently that most of the students does not cheat whether the honor code is implemented, and that their response does not really help to strengthen the new policy. The survey should be projected to students that cheated before or potential cheaters, in order to gain real perspectives of the honor code, and furthermore evaluate the policy. Therefore, the survey is far from persuasive before the argument provide more details of it.
Last but not least, the argument should answer how would the policy in Groveton would be effective in other schools. Even though the questions above are thoroughly discussed, it does not guarantee that the same measurement can decrease cheating cases elsewhere. It is possible that, schools beside Groveton already have low cheating rates, and that implementing honor code is not as effective as it did in Groveton. The argument should provide evidences, such as a survey nationwide, to prove the honor code as an effective way.
The prompt sees honor code as a facile method to prevent cheating among students, by providing examples such as cheating cases difference, and a survey result done in the school. However, to better support the argument, it should answer questions above to further strengthen the idea of implementing the honor code as an effective way to prevent cheating.
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: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 394 350
No. of Characters: 1990 1500
No. of Different Words: 165 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.455 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.051 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.618 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 155 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 115 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 91 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 47 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.176 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.271 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.706 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.38 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.604 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.092 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, apparently, but, first, furthermore, however, if, really, so, then, therefore, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 20.0 28.8173652695 69% => OK
Preposition: 51.0 55.5748502994 92% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2051.0 2260.96107784 91% => OK
No of words: 394.0 441.139720559 89% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.20558375635 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.45527027702 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.71250460054 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 176.0 204.123752495 86% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.446700507614 0.468620217663 95% => OK
syllable_count: 640.8 705.55239521 91% => 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: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 6.0 1.67365269461 358% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 38.8928080631 57.8364921388 67% => OK
Chars per sentence: 120.647058824 119.503703932 101% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.1764705882 23.324526521 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.0 5.70786347227 105% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 0.0 4.67664670659 0% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.312879074557 0.218282227539 143% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.109933102162 0.0743258471296 148% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0724723769227 0.0701772020484 103% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.184934741465 0.128457276422 144% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0360116232889 0.0628817314937 57% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.7 14.3799401198 102% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.23 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.38 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 90.0 98.500998004 91% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => 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.