Evidence suggests that academic honor codes, which call for students to agree not to cheat in their academic endeavors and to notify a faculty member if they suspect that others have cheated, are far more successful than are other methods at deterring cheating among students at colleges and universities. Several years ago, Groveton College adopted such a code and discontinued its old-fashioned system in which teachers closely monitored students. Under the old system, teachers reported an average of thirty cases of cheating per year. In the first year the honor code was in place, students reported twenty-one cases of cheating; five years later, this figure had dropped to fourteen. Moreover, in a recent survey, a majority of Groveton students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without.
The article considers that academic honor codes, which call for students to agree not to cheat in their academic endeavors and to notify a faculty member if they suspect that others have cheated, are far more successful than are other methods at deterring cheating among students at colleges and universities. However, there are some question must be answered to make the argument of article more convincing.
First, the author claims that he adopts the evidence to augment his statement. However, where is the evidence from and who is the researcher or professor made this evidence. If the evidence is made by a group of college students who make this evidence for their curriculum reports, the credence of the evidence can’t get any trust; but if the evidence is constructed by a professional team which dedicate to students’ cheating, I consider that no one will have questions about this evidence.
Even if the evidence is worthy of believing, no one can promise that all of students and teachers will accept and conduct the honor code plan. Because if there are many students which do not have academic honor codes, it will give teachers unimaginable pressure. It means that maybe this teacher is not adept in inculcate his or her students and then others will make strange ideas to this teacher. Therefore, if the teacher finds that his student cheats, maybe he will not report to the school so that he can avoid getting others disparate eyes. The same concept for students, they maybe conceal the cheat to sustain their friendship. This cause that the correct cheating cases are less than the article writes.
Another question is that we need to know that how many students enroll the school. Although twenty-one cases of cheating look very rare at first glance, it will have a great difference when the base number is large or small. If the base number is approximately three thousand students, the cheating rate is under 1 percent. It is a very low ratio. But if the school is in the rural area which have only about 100 students, the cheating rate is over 20 percent. It will be a big trouble for that school that they can give their students correct education. Maybe it is the reason why so many students cheating. Therefore, we cannot absolutely claim that academic honor codes is a good way for avoiding cheating.
If all of questions can be answer by the author, the article can be more convincing.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 415 350
No. of Characters: 1956 1500
No. of Different Words: 193 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.513 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.713 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.41 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 132 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 106 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 75 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 27 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.75 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.653 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.307 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.307 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.134 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, look, may, so, then, therefore, as to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 22.0 13.6137724551 162% => OK
Pronoun: 43.0 28.8173652695 149% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 32.0 55.5748502994 58% => More preposition wanted.
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2008.0 2260.96107784 89% => OK
No of words: 415.0 441.139720559 94% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.83855421687 5.12650576532 94% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.51348521516 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.53681958793 2.78398813304 91% => OK
Unique words: 197.0 204.123752495 97% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.474698795181 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 625.5 705.55239521 89% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 71.4837568962 57.8364921388 124% => OK
Chars per sentence: 100.4 119.503703932 84% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.75 23.324526521 89% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.1 5.70786347227 54% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.421964368703 0.218282227539 193% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.110250573963 0.0743258471296 148% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.158334353588 0.0701772020484 226% => The coherence between sentences is low.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.239119468982 0.128457276422 186% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.213807668268 0.0628817314937 340% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.7 14.3799401198 81% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 59.64 48.3550499002 123% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.79 12.5979740519 86% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.52 8.32208582834 90% => OK
difficult_words: 76.0 98.500998004 77% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.