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.
The argument that the scent of lavender flowers is now effective makes numerous unwarranted assumptions regarding the amount of volunteers employed, how strenuous this volunteers quotidian activities are and what led the volunteers to sleep soundly in the third week. Taken as a whole, these unstated assumptions render the argument highly suspect. Indeed, if these assumptions do not hold true, the argument totally falls apart.
The first leap in the argument is the assumption thirty volunteers are enough to determine the effectiveness of the scent of lavender flowers. Thirty volunteers are not enough to determine the effective of a substance. More volunteers are needed from different regions, more adults, more children, more men and more women with chronic insomnia are needed to test whether the scent of lavender flowers is effective to cure insomnia. Therefore, the author need to provide more volunteers to determining how effective the lavender flowers are in curing insomnia. Assuming this volunteers are up to a hundred people, consisting of different ages and genders and they all prove to be healed by the scent of lavender flowers, then argument will be strengthened. But with this little amount of volunteers, the argument seems weak.
The second leap in the argument its failure to consider what the volunteer’s diurnal activities. The author failed to take into consideration, how strenuous the volunteer’s daily activities are which might have led to them sleeping soundly or not to sleep soundly during the period of observation. It is seen from the argument that the volunteers took their medications in the first week and woke up tired. They stopped the medication in the second weak and still woke up tired. This clearly shows that the volunteers are engaged in some other activities that is obstructing the effectiveness of the medication being seen. Thus, the author needs to evaluate what the volunteers do in the day to consider the validity of the argument. If it is seen that the volunteers engage in arduous task during the day which is contributing to them waking up tired, then the argument will be strengthened.
Finally, the argument failed to state other factors that led to the volunteers sleeping soundly in the third week. Were the volunteers’ medication changed? Were the volunteers daily activities changed? Were their pillows replaced with pillows that are made up of more lavender flower or less lavender flowers? Something must have changed in the third week which the author failed to mention. Ergo, in order to strengthen the argument, one needs to evaluate what changed in the third week of observation. If it is seen that more of the lavender pillows made the volunteers sleep longer and soundly in the third week, then, one can assume the scent of lavender flowers is effective but if it is seen that some other factors are changed, such as reducing the work hour of the volunteers, changing their daily diet and medication among many others, then argument that lavender flowers are effective will seem weak.
In conclusion, the argument that lavender flowers’ scent are now proven to cure insomnia within a short period of time makes a number of unstated assumptions that seriously debilitate its validity. Unless these assumptions are addressed, the argument totally falls apart. Thus, the author might be making a major mistake by assuming that lavender flowers are now effective.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 26 15
No. of Words: 557 350
No. of Characters: 2822 1500
No. of Different Words: 200 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.858 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.066 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.681 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 204 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 163 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 120 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 71 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.423 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.244 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.654 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.355 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.532 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.174 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 203, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...he volunteers daily activities changed? Were their pillows replaced with pillows tha...
^^^^
Line 9, column 105, Rule ID: PERIOD_OF_TIME[1]
Message: Use simply 'period'.
Suggestion: period
... proven to cure insomnia within a short period of time makes a number of unstated assumptions ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, if, regarding, second, so, still, then, therefore, third, thus, in conclusion, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 33.0 19.6327345309 168% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 74.0 55.5748502994 133% => OK
Nominalization: 25.0 16.3942115768 152% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2899.0 2260.96107784 128% => OK
No of words: 557.0 441.139720559 126% => OK
Chars per words: 5.20466786355 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.85807034144 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.7993194961 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 210.0 204.123752495 103% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.377019748654 0.468620217663 80% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 887.4 705.55239521 126% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 26.0 19.7664670659 132% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 77.6801970759 57.8364921388 134% => OK
Chars per sentence: 111.5 119.503703932 93% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.4230769231 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.11538461538 5.70786347227 72% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 16.0 6.88822355289 232% => Less negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.242205898022 0.218282227539 111% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0752787017353 0.0743258471296 101% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0710158740348 0.0701772020484 101% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.153072504061 0.128457276422 119% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0629730671192 0.0628817314937 100% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.8 14.3799401198 96% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.88 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.65 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 105.0 98.500998004 107% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.