Argue 70.
The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of a large, highly diversified company.
"Ten years ago our company had two new office buildings constructed as regional headquarters for two regions. The buildings were erected by different construction companies — Alpha and Zeta. Although the two buildings had identical floor plans, the building constructed by Zeta cost 30 percent more to build. However, that building's expenses for maintenance last year were only half those of Alpha's. In addition, the energy consumption of the Zeta building has been lower than that of the Alpha building every year since its construction. Given these data, plus the fact that Zeta has a stable workforce with little employee turnover, we recommend using Zeta rather than Alpha for our new building project, even though Alpha's bid promises lower construction costs."
In this memo, the vice president claims that the company should hire Zeta rather than Alpha for their new building project even though Alpha's construction cost is lower than that of Zeta. To bolster his argument, the president refers to Zeta's lower maintenance expense and lower energy consumption. At first, the argument may seem convincing; however, the lack of solid evidence makes me question the validity.
First, the president needs to provide concrete evidence of the inherent condition of the buildings built by Zeta and Alpha to evaluate the construction costs and maintenance expenses. The author admits that the building established by Zeta costs 30% more than Alpha and rashly dismisses unforeseen disadvantages of Zeta. However, with this fact, it can be argued that Zeta should not be preferred over Alpha. After all, costing 30% more may be significant, and it may be actually burdensome. In addition, the author states that Zeta's maintenance expenses were lower than Alpha's last year. It may be possible that the low maintenance cost of the Zeta building was only prevalent only for just one year. If Zeta's better performance in saving maintenance costs is temporary, the company should not use Zeta.
Second, the president needs to supplement the argument with more solid evidence on the lower energy consumption of Zeta compared to Alpha. It is plausible that the building constructed by Zeta composes of a marginal number of workers, and the working hours of this building are significantly shorter than that of Alpha. In addition, the weather conditions of the two regions where Zeta and Alpha constructed buildings are different. For example, Alpha's building is located in a boiling area, which eventually requires air conditioning more frequently than Zeta. Furthermore, the energy consumption difference between the two buildings could be insignificant. In this case, the company should reconsider using Zeta for the new construction project.
Las
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 1 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 312 350
No. of Characters: 1625 1500
No. of Different Words: 153 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.203 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.208 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.793 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 118 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 94 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: 18.353 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.079 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.647 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.369 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.532 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.074 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, first, furthermore, however, if, may, second, so, after all, for example, in addition
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 34.0 55.5748502994 61% => OK
Nominalization: 24.0 16.3942115768 146% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1668.0 2260.96107784 74% => OK
No of words: 312.0 441.139720559 71% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.34615384615 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.20279927342 4.56307096286 92% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.85687516357 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 152.0 204.123752495 74% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.487179487179 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 513.9 705.55239521 73% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => 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: 16.0 19.7664670659 81% => 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: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 33.536360864 57.8364921388 58% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 104.25 119.503703932 87% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.5 23.324526521 84% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.9375 5.70786347227 104% => OK
Paragraphs: 3.0 5.15768463074 58% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => 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: 0.172024294597 0.218282227539 79% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0735234713618 0.0743258471296 99% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.059450553444 0.0701772020484 85% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.137272040226 0.128457276422 107% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0522559963845 0.0628817314937 83% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.5 14.3799401198 94% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.75 12.5979740519 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.68 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 81.0 98.500998004 82% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Minimum four paragraphs wanted.
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.