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 argument, the author concludes that students of the Sanlee district should be assigned fewer homework as to the students of Marlee district in order to raise students' performance grades. The author relies on three unwarranted assumptions that, if not substantiated, dramatically reduce the credibility of the recommendation.
First of all, the largest leap in the argument is the assumption that the survey done among the math and science teachers is representative of districts of Sanlee and Marlee. It is questionable that was the questionnaire was scientifically prepared ? Was the survey was not biased ? The argument does not provide answers to this questions. It is also possible that the respondent teachers did not provide accurate information about the grades and assigning homework to the students. If either of the scenario is true, the conclusion drawn by author is significantly weakened.
Secondly, the argument lacks a depth of details on the assumption that research environment of both Sanlee and Marlee districts are identical. Perhaps, highly educated people may live in the city of Marlee, such that the home education of students is very good. Thus, the students of Marlee district might have scored higher grades even upon reduced homework per week. However, the family education among the families of Sanlee district may be poor, such that students could not get hifher grades even doing heavy load of homework per week. If author does not provide this evidence, his/her argument does not hold water.
Last but not least, the the argument demands another evidence on the assumption that assigning fewer homework provide sufficient time for students to focus on a single homework that lead to them scoring higher grades. Maybe, students might not focus on homework rather may involve in playing games and other extra curricular activities, as the number of homework is reduced. It is possible that only giving homework to the students in Marlee district has not lead them to score higher grades. Instead there might be other factors that lead them to score high. If this is true, the argument is seriously weakened.
In nutshell, the argument seems like a plausible one at first glance, but, upon closer scrutiny, it may fall apart. Thus, author must provide above mentioned evidences to buttress the argument.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 377 350
No. of Characters: 1916 1500
No. of Different Words: 178 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.406 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.082 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.676 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 149 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 107 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 87 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 35 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.85 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.039 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.322 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.527 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.127 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...he credibility of the recommendation. First of all, the largest leap in the ar...
^^^
Line 3, column 325, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[1]
Message: Did you mean 'these'?
Suggestion: these
...he argument does not provide answers to this questions. It is also possible that the...
^^^^
Line 7, column 21, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a word
Suggestion: the
... not hold water. Last but not least, the the argument demands another evidence on th...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 21, Rule ID: DT_DT[1]
Message: Maybe you need to remove one determiner so that only 'the' or 'the' is left.
Suggestion: the; the
... not hold water. Last but not least, the the argument demands another evidence on th...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 460, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[2]
Message: Possible agreement error -- use past participle here: 'leaded', 'led'.
Suggestion: leaded; led
...the students in Marlee district has not lead them to score higher grades. Instead th...
^^^^
Line 7, column 494, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Instead,
...s not lead them to score higher grades. Instead there might be other factors that lead ...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, thus, as to, 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: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 46.0 55.5748502994 83% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1974.0 2260.96107784 87% => OK
No of words: 376.0 441.139720559 85% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.25 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.40348946061 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.75439389033 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 182.0 204.123752495 89% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.484042553191 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 601.2 705.55239521 85% => 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: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 49.2875237763 57.8364921388 85% => OK
Chars per sentence: 98.7 119.503703932 83% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.8 23.324526521 81% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.15 5.70786347227 73% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 6.0 5.25449101796 114% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => 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: 0.21379025916 0.218282227539 98% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.060981989294 0.0743258471296 82% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0709354315236 0.0701772020484 101% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.114537291605 0.128457276422 89% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0663339431036 0.0628817314937 105% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.7 14.3799401198 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 53.21 48.3550499002 110% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.17 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.97 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 82.0 98.500998004 83% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => 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.