"All students should be required to take the driver's education course at Centerville High School. In the past two years, several accidents in and around Centerville have involved teenage drivers. Since a number of parents in Centerville have complained that they are too busy to teach their teenagers to drive, some other instruction is necessary to ensure that these teenagers are safe drivers. Although there are two driving schools in Centerville, parents on a tight budget cannot afford to pay for driving instruction. Therefore an effective and mandatory program sponsored by the high school is the only solution to this serious problem."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The presented letter recommends that making as mandatory to take driver’s education course at Center for all students. As discussed below, the author of the letter relies on several critical assumptions and is therefore unpersuasive without further evidence in support.
To begin with, the author assumed that all accidents are mainly caused by teenage drivers without presenting evidence thereof. However, it is not clear to assure that teenagers’ lack of knowledge about driving was the main reason of these accidents. Even if there were several numbers of accidents which teenage drivers are involved, most teenagers could be victims of the accidents. Also, the number of accidents in past two years are not specifically provided by the author, even though the number is critical whether the situation is important or not. As the word ‘several’ has subjective characteristic, the author has to provide numerical data of the accidents to make his argument more impartial. Therefore, further evidence pertaining to the main cause of accidents and statistics of the number of accidents in the past two years required to strengthen author’s statement.
Furthermore, the author’s assumption on situations of parents in Centerville also relies on tenuous evidences. First, the author didn’t present how many parents are not suffering from lack of time to teach their children to drive. If the number of parents in this situation is not significant, letting parents to teach their teenage children could be possible solution for this issue. Also, the author’s groundless assumption on financial status of parents could be weakness of his assertion. There is no data about how many parents are not available to afford tuition for driving schools, and whether the number of parents in this situation takes the majority or not. Accordingly, more specific evidences on status of parents in Centerville have to be presented to make the author’s argument persuasive.
Even if the gravity of accidents caused by teenagers is severe, and parents are not able to support their children by teaching themselves or sending them to driving schools, the author’s solution that attending related courses at the high scold could not be the only and best solution to this issue. If road conditions in the town are not in the best condition and rate of accidences caused by adult drivers are also high, spending more budget on maintaining and reconstructing road condition could be better solution. Also, providing vouchers to take online driving courses could be a possible alternative instead of sending all students to the high school to for driving education. Taking online courses would be more convenience for children because these courses are accessible in any places. Therefore, the author has to consider if there are any other alternatives to provide the solution for the alleged problem for the purpose of improving the safety for teenagers.
In sum, the author rests his case on a number of assumptions that may not be accurate. Consequently, further evidences pointed above and presenting alternative solutions can strengthen the author’s argument substantially.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 500 350
No. of Characters: 2606 1500
No. of Different Words: 214 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.729 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.212 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.787 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 215 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 176 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 117 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 78 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.81 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.203 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.81 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.34 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.34 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.113 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
accordingly, also, consequently, first, furthermore, however, if, may, so, then, therefore, as to, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 28.0 19.6327345309 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 20.0 28.8173652695 69% => OK
Preposition: 78.0 55.5748502994 140% => OK
Nominalization: 24.0 16.3942115768 146% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2688.0 2260.96107784 119% => OK
No of words: 499.0 441.139720559 113% => OK
Chars per words: 5.38677354709 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.72634191566 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.92963216934 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 218.0 204.123752495 107% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.436873747495 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 832.5 705.55239521 118% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
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: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 44.948547052 57.8364921388 78% => OK
Chars per sentence: 128.0 119.503703932 107% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.7619047619 23.324526521 102% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.33333333333 5.70786347227 93% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => 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: 0.282451166267 0.218282227539 129% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0883508559998 0.0743258471296 119% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0581009964766 0.0701772020484 83% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.139906318031 0.128457276422 109% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0604771903628 0.0628817314937 96% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.8 14.3799401198 110% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 39.67 48.3550499002 82% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.28 12.5979740519 113% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.54 8.32208582834 103% => OK
difficult_words: 119.0 98.500998004 121% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.