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.
The given argument states that even though the students of Marlee district do homework 2 or three days a week, they attain better grades and have higher chances of getting promoted to the next class. However, the author fails to present a cogent argument, as his conclusions are riddled with unwarranted assumptions.
Firstly, the author doesn’t clearly mention the details of the survey. The duration for which the study was conducted, number of schools that participated, number of teachers questioned and the numerical analysis of data acquired aren’t mentioned. The argument says that ‘many’ teachers in Sanlee and ‘most’ teachers in Marlee, the author hasn’t provided any information which confirms that only the teachers which satisfy the given criterion were questioned. Also, the survey doesn’t take into account the opinions of teachers that teach subjects other than science and mathematics.
Additionally, the total number of students in the district isn’t mentioned. It doesn’t clarify that the assessments, grading system and criterion for repeating a class is similar or different in schools of the two districts. The author would arrive at a faulty conclusion if the assessment modes and criterion for passing is different in Sanlee and Marlee. The text doesn’t give us an insight about the question paper pattern and types of questions that are asked in the examination. It may be the case that the schools in Sanlee set a practical and HOTs based examination whereas schools in Marlee give simple theoretical questions or those similar to their homework.
Moreover, it doesn’t ponder over the scenario that the students in Marlee could be attending personal or tuition classes after school hours. Marlee could be a district where the population is more educated and hence the student’s parent can help their children to learn and apply various concepts. Sanlee, could be a district where students might be more interested in co-curricular activities, internships or part time jobs which might be the reason for lower overall grades and passing percentage. Therefore, by giving daily assignments and homework the teachers can ensure daily practice of their ward, increase their concentration time. The homework might not necessarily be related to the subject, it might simply aim to increase overall knowledge students and guide them towards a practical to everyday problems.
To sum, assigning homework only twice a week can’t be an ideal solution in every situation. The need of giving homework can vary according to the circumstances. Hence, the argument provided by the author can be considered insubstantial to prove this claim.
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: 19 15
No. of Words: 427 350
No. of Characters: 2179 1500
No. of Different Words: 223 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.546 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.103 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.716 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 170 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 129 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 96 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.474 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.163 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.474 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.291 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.542 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.091 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 411, Rule ID: EN_COMPOUNDS
Message: This word is normally spelled with hyphen.
Suggestion: part-time
...o-curricular activities, internships or part time jobs which might be the reason for lowe...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 820, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...wards a practical to everyday problems. To sum, assigning homework only twice a ...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, firstly, hence, however, if, may, moreover, so, therefore, whereas
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.6327345309 81% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 19.0 11.1786427146 170% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 41.0 55.5748502994 74% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2271.0 2260.96107784 100% => OK
No of words: 419.0 441.139720559 95% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.4200477327 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.52432199235 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.83891393566 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 230.0 204.123752495 113% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.54892601432 0.468620217663 117% => OK
syllable_count: 666.9 705.55239521 95% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 44.7070489029 57.8364921388 77% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.526315789 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.0526315789 23.324526521 95% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.15789473684 5.70786347227 73% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.227211601823 0.218282227539 104% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0640369785821 0.0743258471296 86% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0556919520405 0.0701772020484 79% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.112728533681 0.128457276422 88% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0565267967185 0.0628817314937 90% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.1 14.3799401198 105% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.16 12.5979740519 112% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.87 8.32208582834 107% => OK
difficult_words: 110.0 98.500998004 112% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.