The council of Maple County, concerned about the county's becoming overdeveloped, is debating a proposed measure that would prevent the development of existing farmland in the county. But the council is also concerned that such a restriction, by limiting the supply of new housing, could lead to significant increases in the price of housing in the county. Proponents of the measure note that Chestnut County established a similar measure ten years ago, and its housing prices have increased only modestly since. However, opponents of the measure note that Pine County adopted restrictions on the development of new residential housing fifteen years ago, and its housing prices have since more than doubled. The council currently predicts that the proposed measure, if passed, will result in a significant increase in housing prices in Maple County.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the prediction and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the prediction.
According to the given passage, the Maple County council is expecting the restriction of existing farmland development will result in the increase of housing prices with limited further housing supply. However, there are contradicting views among proponents and opponents with totally different cases from two counties, where they already implemented a similar measure, limiting development. It might indicate that there are unwarranted issues which dragged the different results, therefore, in order to properly expect how Maple County’s case will be, several questions have to be answered.
Firstly, were there any significant changes in the population in Chestnut County or Pine County? If the number of residents of Chestnut County has not been significantly changed while that of Pine County has increased almost double, the different result of housing price changes would have been due to the population change. Then, the increment of housing prices will depend on the expectation of population change of Maple County.
Secondly, did Pine County change residences into other types of facilities such as department stores or concert halls? Perhaps Pine County wanted to attract more people to the county to gain money and expand places where the residents can work. However, perhaps they overly changed, and the number of houses became paucity to accommodate all the residents, as result, housing prices increased. If then, the same result will happen to Maple County unless they overly change residences into other types of buildings.
Thirdly, was there huge inflation between 15 years ago and 10 years ago? Probably the nation rapidly grew up until 10 years ago, and it resulted in doubled prices for almost everything including groceries and housing prices. After then, there might be no big differences until the present. If then, the increase of housing prices is irrelevant to the policy, limiting the development of farmland, and it is hard to expect the increase in Maple County unless there is a big economic change in the nation where the county is included.
To sum up, the reason why the two counties resulted in totally different housing price changes might be due to certain situations not clearly mentioned in the reading passage. In order to expect how Maple County’s housing prices will change properly, the council will need to re-investigate how the different results came out according to the questions suggested above.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 2 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 387 350
No. of Characters: 2015 1500
No. of Different Words: 185 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.435 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.207 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.585 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 173 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 117 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 72 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 48 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.188 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.502 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.362 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.362 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.098 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, firstly, however, if, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, third, thirdly, while, such as, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 8.0 28.8173652695 28% => OK
Preposition: 55.0 55.5748502994 99% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2073.0 2260.96107784 92% => OK
No of words: 387.0 441.139720559 88% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.35658914729 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.43534841618 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.66097684355 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 196.0 204.123752495 96% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.50645994832 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 642.6 705.55239521 91% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => 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: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 52.7942646033 57.8364921388 91% => OK
Chars per sentence: 129.5625 119.503703932 108% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.1875 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.8125 5.70786347227 119% => 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: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.227019437422 0.218282227539 104% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0890419685637 0.0743258471296 120% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0786975560697 0.0701772020484 112% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.141226237636 0.128457276422 110% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0297666942739 0.0628817314937 47% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.9 14.3799401198 111% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 38.66 48.3550499002 80% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.1 12.5979740519 112% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.03 8.32208582834 109% => OK
difficult_words: 103.0 98.500998004 105% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.