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.
The author asserts that the decline in deer populations is the result of deer's being unable to follow their age-old migration patterns across the frozen sea. To support the argument, the author has presented one primary evidence that the reports about the deer populations coincide with recent global warming trends that have caused the sea ice to melt. Without ice, the deer cannot move from island to island in search of food. Although the argument seems plausible, it has several unwarranted assumptions that affect its merit.
First of all, the report about the decline in population is from local hunters. Are they a credible and reliable source? Did they perform a thorough investigation before concluding the study? If not, the whole argument is futile. The author must verify the authenticity of the report before starting to provide evidence to support the argument.
Also, it is established that there are hunters in the vicinity which implies that the Arctic deers were hunted probably. It is highly likely that the hunting might have contributed towards the decrease. Since it is an Arctic region, the availability of food might be sparse, because of the hostile environment for crops. And so the people might have hunted the deers for food. This would weaken the argument if it is true.
Moreover, the deers moved from place to place in search of food, and the author claims that global warming might have hindered this movement. However, the deer need not move if there was plenty of food in a particular region. Maybe the sparsity of food for deers might have been due to encroachments by people. It would implicate that it was the people who were the foremost reason for population decline and not global warming.
The Arctic deers must have existed for a long time and should have gone through multiple environmental changes but did it affect their population? Answering this question might help evaluate the argument. If the deers did not face an endangerment before, I think it is not fair to conclude that the 'melting of the sea ice' is the reason for the decrease without a compelling justification. The pieces of evidence presented by the author needs to be validated by researching more into the place and not just by correlating two reports.
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: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 381 350
No. of Characters: 1847 1500
No. of Different Words: 185 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.418 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.848 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.522 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 140 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 88 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 58 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 29 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.318 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.57 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.409 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.288 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.506 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.044 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, i think, first of all, it is true
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 46.0 55.5748502994 83% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1898.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 381.0 441.139720559 86% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.98162729659 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.41805628031 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.5826798327 2.78398813304 93% => OK
Unique words: 190.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.498687664042 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 585.9 705.55239521 83% => 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: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 22.8473053892 74% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 44.4112309897 57.8364921388 77% => OK
Chars per sentence: 86.2727272727 119.503703932 72% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.3181818182 23.324526521 74% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.04545454545 5.70786347227 71% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 11.0 4.67664670659 235% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.210659498081 0.218282227539 97% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.063213401605 0.0743258471296 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0774469101385 0.0701772020484 110% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.114610737585 0.128457276422 89% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0419562982793 0.0628817314937 67% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 10.7 14.3799401198 74% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 62.68 48.3550499002 130% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 8.7 12.197005988 71% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.31 12.5979740519 90% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.29 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 92.0 98.500998004 93% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.8 11.1389221557 79% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.