The author of this prompt suggests that the students who are given less homework assignments get better grades than students who are given daily homework assignments, therefore teachers in their highschool should assign homework no more than twice a week. There are gaps in the evidence given by the author, thus it is premature to make such conclusions.
For example, the prompt states that many teachers in Sanlee and most teachers in Marlee had taken the survery and the author extrapolated the data. The question here is why were not all the math and science teachers surveyed? There could be discrepancies between teachers in the Sanlee district and between teacher in the Marlee district. The teachers in Sanlee who took the survey, could be the only teachers who hand out daily homework assignments. There could be other teachers in Sanlee that do not give out daily homework and only do so two or three times a week. In the same vein, Marlee teachers surveyed could have been the only teachers who handed out homework two or three times a week. Whereas the rest of the teachers in Marlee gave out homework daily. Without further evidence to support this claim about teachers giving out homework, the author cannot simply conclude that giving less homework would produce in better results.
Next, the ratio of students to teachers could be disproportionate when comparing both school districts. For instance, in a Sanlee class there could be 40 students to one teacher, whereas in Marlee there could be 10 students to one teacher. Therefore, there is an imbalance in the student-teacher ratio. Following this example, a teacher could find it very difficult to teacher 40 students at the same time, therefore students may struggle to compete with each other for their teacher’s time. On the other hand, the 10 students in a Marlee class could easily be allocated time for one-on-one study sessions with the teacher. Furthermore, a Marlee student who particularly struggles with specific questions will be able to get more time with their teacher. Sanlee students might not be able to find the time to ask their teacher for help because the teacher is busy with other students. Therefore, such students might give up and not seek help, therefore causing their grades to drop. This could attribute to the disparity between the grades of Sanlee and Marlee students.
Lastly, it could be the policy of the school in the different districts that require teachers to either give out daily homework, or only twice or thrice a week. As such, Sanlee teachers are obligated to handout daily homework. But, because of their heavy workload, they might not have sufficient time to go through their student’s homework properly and human error in marking might come into play. On the other hand, Marlee teachers do not have hand out daily homework, therefore have ample time to thoroughly go through students work and provide feedback to them. Such disparity in time management might be key to why students in Marlee have better grades than Sanlee students.
With these questions and examples at hand, the author’s claims are not substantial enough to conclude that giving students less homework will result in better grades.
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: 25 15
No. of Words: 535 350
No. of Characters: 2629 1500
No. of Different Words: 205 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.809 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.914 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.458 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 193 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 139 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 105 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 40 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.4 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.116 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.56 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.356 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.541 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.172 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 698, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “Whereas” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...out homework two or three times a week. Whereas the rest of the teachers in Marlee gave...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, furthermore, if, lastly, may, so, therefore, thus, whereas, for example, for instance, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 22.0 12.9520958084 170% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 73.0 55.5748502994 131% => OK
Nominalization: 7.0 16.3942115768 43% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2702.0 2260.96107784 120% => OK
No of words: 535.0 441.139720559 121% => OK
Chars per words: 5.05046728972 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.80937282943 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.54927095979 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 216.0 204.123752495 106% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.403738317757 0.468620217663 86% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 797.4 705.55239521 113% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 43.9611464819 57.8364921388 76% => OK
Chars per sentence: 108.08 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.4 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.36 5.70786347227 76% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 13.0 4.67664670659 278% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.350498213193 0.218282227539 161% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.133260207849 0.0743258471296 179% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0819735227967 0.0701772020484 117% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.195623168136 0.128457276422 152% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.11606661371 0.0628817314937 185% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.1 14.3799401198 91% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 48.3550499002 121% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.01 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.39 8.32208582834 89% => OK
difficult_words: 92.0 98.500998004 93% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.