The data from a survey of high school math and science teachers show that in the district of Sanlee many of these teachers reported assigning daily homework, whereas in the district of Marlee, most science and math teachers reported assigning homework no more than two or three days per week. Despite receiving less frequent homework assignments, Marlee students earn better grades overall and are less likely to be required to repeat a year of school than are students in Sanlee. These results call into question the usefulness of frequent homework assignments. Most likely the Marlee students have more time to concentrate on individual assignments than do the Sanlee students who have homework every day. Therefore teachers in our high schools should assign homework no more than twice a week.
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.
In the above passage, the author concludes that the high school teachers should reduce the amount of assigned homework based on a survey that showed more homework didn’t correlate with better academic achievements. However, the author should provide further specific pieces of evidence that will allow us to fully evaluate the argument and the writer’s conclusion.
First of all, evidence is needed whether the survey was conducted in a scientific manner. It could be possibly that the experiment was ill conducted, and that the survey analysis was biased towards the Marlee school thus it could explain the seemly higher academic performance of the students in that school. Perhaps, the scientist, who conducted the experiment, didn’t fully account for the total workload of the homework. It’s possible that the students in Marlee school even though they received lesser homework but the difficulty of it was on another scale compared to the Sanlee. Therefore, such a difference in the level of assigned homework could explain the academic achievements of the Marlee school students.
Second of all, specific evidence should be provided on whether both schools are roughly comparable in the framework of the conducted research. The discrepancy in the academic results could be simply attributed to the number of students. It could be the case in which Sarlee school is the public school with 500 students while Marlee is the private one and consists of only 200 students. The teacher could effectively teach only about 10 students at a time and if the number of students in the classroom will increase, the quality of education will surely deteriorate. As the teacher could not effectively educate 20 students the same as if there were only ten students. Thus, if the above scenario has merit, it will undermine the author's contention.
Finally, the author should outline whether the Marlee school students have had extra-lessons on STEM subjects. Such discrepancy in students performance could be ascribed to private tutoring or additional preparatory courses. It’s simply that the Marlee students had more learning hours compared to their peers in the Sanlee school. In that case, additional tutoring will definitely improve the performance of these students. Thereby, if the mentioned assumption would be proven valid, then the author's assertion will be severely weakened.
In conclusion, it’s possible that students' performance did not correlate with the frequency of homework, and that the school teacher should curtail the number of homework they assign. However, as it stands now, the argument is based on the flawed assumptions that should be substantiated with the specific pieces of evidence that I outlined above, so that the argument could be evaluated properly.
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: 20 15
No. of Words: 441 350
No. of Characters: 2292 1500
No. of Different Words: 198 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.583 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.197 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.663 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 197 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 141 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 111 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 46 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.05 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.392 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.7 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.344 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.548 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.092 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 67, Rule ID: IN_A_X_MANNER[1]
Message: Consider replacing "in a scientific manner" with adverb for "scientific"; eg, "in a hasty manner" with "hastily".
...needed whether the survey was conducted in a scientific manner. It could be possibly that the experime...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 732, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...enario has merit, it will undermine the authors contention. Finally, the author shou...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 495, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...umption would be proven valid, then the authors assertion will be severely weakened. ...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 35, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'students'' or 'student's'?
Suggestion: students'; student's
...d. In conclusion, it’s possible that students performance did not correlate with the ...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, however, if, second, so, then, therefore, thus, while, in conclusion, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 22.0 12.9520958084 170% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2361.0 2260.96107784 104% => OK
No of words: 439.0 441.139720559 100% => OK
Chars per words: 5.37813211845 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.57737117129 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.74536144419 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 202.0 204.123752495 99% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.46013667426 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 713.7 705.55239521 101% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 43.4057599864 57.8364921388 75% => OK
Chars per sentence: 118.05 119.503703932 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.95 23.324526521 94% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.15 5.70786347227 90% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.159262239953 0.218282227539 73% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0556703371457 0.0743258471296 75% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0657531649135 0.0701772020484 94% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.106207570343 0.128457276422 83% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0435719468777 0.0628817314937 69% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.9 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.92 12.5979740519 110% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.35 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 102.0 98.500998004 104% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.