Arctic deer live on islands in Canada's arctic regions. They search for food by moving over ice from island to island during the course of the year. Their habitat is limited to areas warm enough to sustain the plants on which they feed and cold enough, at least some of the year, for the ice to cover the sea separating the islands, allowing the deer to travel over it. Unfortunately, according to reports from local hunters, the deer populations are declining. Since these reports coincide with recent global warming trends that have caused the sea ice to melt, we can conclude that the purported decline in deer populations is the result of the deer's being unable to follow their age-old migration patterns across the frozen sea.
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.
It can be inferred from the passage that the survival of arctic deers are subject to two factors, one is that the weather is warm enough for the plants to grow, while another is that the area is cold during certain periods for deers to cross different islands. Based on this understanding, the author suspects that the decline of deer results from global warming which may sound reasonable at first, but can be challenged due to some missing evidence that should be disclosed.
To begin with, when the author concludes the potential reason to cause the decrease of deer is global warming, it only explains one factor that affects the population of deers, which is global warming hinders the ice to form and limits the food areas for deers. However, if this claim was true, it can also be inferred that there will be more plants for deers to consume since the weather is warm enough, and actually deers may not even move to other islands to get sufficient food. Therefore, there is an obvious logic flaw rooted in the author’s conclusion, and more evidence about the change of moving pattern observed from deers are essential before claiming any potential reasons behind.
Secondly, even evidence is found to prove that global warming is one of the reasons to contribute to the drop of deers, it is still unknown which exact effect is harming the deers. To be more specific, lots of outcomes can be triggered due to global warming, and there is no information about how the author comes to the conclusion that the melting ice is the fatal reason. It may be possible that the ice season doesn’t match the food searching periods of deers, or the ice season changes too quickly for deers to cope with. What I would like to emphasize here is that the impact of global warming lies in numerous aspects and it is premature to state that the melting ice is the root cause if no examination of other facts are being studied.
Thirdly, even though the decline of the deer population happens at the same period of the rise of global warming, it doesn’t guarantee any causal relationship between these two phenomena, not even the correlation. Hence, the author draws the wrong causal relationship if the simultaneity of two events is the only evidence he or she holds. What is required is to research other contributing factors, such as an increase of the predators of deers, or any appearance of other competing species that may damage the sufficiency of the food supply. In other words, more diverse reasons should be studied and only when those potential factors are eliminated, can we claim that the author's statement may be valid.
In conclusion, the incorrect causal relationship, the fallacy of the author’s logic in explaining the condition, as well as the missing study of detailed influence from global warming all make the conclusion specious and difficult to convince.
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: 14 15
No. of Words: 495 350
No. of Characters: 2329 1500
No. of Different Words: 223 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.717 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.705 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.456 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 162 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 121 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 71 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 44 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 35.357 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.799 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.929 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.388 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.626 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.11 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 676, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...s are eliminated, can we claim that the authors statement may be valid. In conc...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 708, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...hat the authors statement may be valid. In conclusion, the incorrect causal rela...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, hence, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, still, therefore, third, thirdly, well, while, as for, in conclusion, such as, as well as, in other words, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 36.0 19.6327345309 183% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 64.0 55.5748502994 115% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2398.0 2260.96107784 106% => OK
No of words: 493.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 4.86409736308 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.71206996034 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.5629379169 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 232.0 204.123752495 114% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.470588235294 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 732.6 705.55239521 104% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 6.0 1.67365269461 358% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 35.0 22.8473053892 153% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 37.8986968706 57.8364921388 66% => OK
Chars per sentence: 171.285714286 119.503703932 143% => OK
Words per sentence: 35.2142857143 23.324526521 151% => OK
Discourse Markers: 13.9285714286 5.70786347227 244% => Less transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.176897281381 0.218282227539 81% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0643070487384 0.0743258471296 87% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0659322782176 0.0701772020484 94% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.104936288157 0.128457276422 82% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0770694021776 0.0628817314937 123% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 19.1 14.3799401198 133% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 44.41 48.3550499002 92% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.8 12.197005988 130% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.5 12.5979740519 91% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.83 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 108.0 98.500998004 110% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 17.5 12.3882235529 141% => OK
gunning_fog: 16.0 11.1389221557 144% => OK
text_standard: 16.0 11.9071856287 134% => 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.