An ancient, traditional remedy for insomnia—the scent of lavender flowers—has now been proved effective. In a recent study, 30 volunteers with chronic insomnia slept each night for three weeks on lavender-scented pillows in a controlled room where their sleep was monitored electronically. During the first week, volunteers continued to take their usual sleeping medication. They slept soundly but wakened feeling tired. At the beginning of the second week, the volunteers discontinued their sleeping medication. During that week, they slept less soundly than the previous week and felt even more tired. During the third week, the volunteers slept longer and more soundly than in the previous two weeks. Therefore, the study proves that lavender cures insomnia within a short period of time.
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.
In the recent study, the scent of lavender flowers has been proved to be a good remedy for insomnia. According to the three-week experiment, the author posits that the traditional way is efficient among 30 samples.
It provides a controlled room for 30 volunteers, but there are also many variables except for the space they stay. Everyone doesn’t have the same time for adapting a new environment, which also affects the result. Hence, it’s better for the researchers rule out the first week of data to avoid the inaccuracy resulting from adaption. We also need further details to determine that the scent is indeed the point for curing insomnia. Do they take a nap after eating lunch for too long leads to short sleep during the night? Once a person sleeps too much in the afternoon, it’s obviously that the sleeping hours and quality may be rather low for she still has energy to burst.
The report points out that the volunteers slept soundly but wakened feeling tired, but the feeling isn’t a good indication of research. It needs the quantitative way to evaluate whether the sleeping quality is good, instead of relying on feeling. In addition, the tiredness is continuous so even though the volunteers discontinued the remedy, it’s likely that it exists no difference actually.
Despite the three-week curing process is effective, the researchers cannot guarantee that the remedy is a long-period way. Consequently, it has to prolong the schedule of experiment to ensure that the scent is capable of eradicating the insomnia. It’s possible that after the three weeks, the insomnia is no longer to be dealt with by the scent partly because the scent has a certain limitation working in the body. On the other hand, 30 samples is too small to summarize that insomnia can be solved by the traditional remedy. What’s more, the author didn’t mention what the gender and age of the subjects is. If they’re all belong to the certain age range, then it only can conclude that the scent is effective for them.
To sum up, before considering the scent of lavender is a solution to insomnia, it still needs more evidence to support the idea.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 369 350
No. of Characters: 1730 1500
No. of Different Words: 200 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.383 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.688 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.559 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 121 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 86 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 60 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 36 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.5 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 3.819 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.611 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.3 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.53 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.079 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 130, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...eeds more evidence to support the idea.
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, consequently, first, hence, if, may, so, still, then, as to, except for, in addition, to sum up, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 5.0 12.9520958084 39% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 44.0 55.5748502994 79% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1832.0 2260.96107784 81% => OK
No of words: 365.0 441.139720559 83% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.01917808219 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.37092360658 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.75912855666 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 207.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.567123287671 0.468620217663 121% => OK
syllable_count: 558.0 705.55239521 79% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 22.139638214 57.8364921388 38% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 101.777777778 119.503703932 85% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.2777777778 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.5 5.70786347227 131% => 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 : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.349239909863 0.218282227539 160% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.106359494594 0.0743258471296 143% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.107621186282 0.0701772020484 153% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.200360945905 0.128457276422 156% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.126702104224 0.0628817314937 201% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.4 14.3799401198 86% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 59.64 48.3550499002 123% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.84 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.78 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 96.0 98.500998004 97% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => 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.