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
The argument states that academic honor codes, where students agree not to cheat and expose others who do so, is more successful than the old fashioned student monitoring system. The author thinks so because according to him, such kind of approach has been proved to be successful by some surveys and evidence. But his statement is based on some unwarranted assumptions, which to make his point more valid and accepted need to be clarified.
Firstly, he mentioned about the evidence regarding the success of honor codes but provides no further information about that evidence. How the evidence was collected, who were surveyed, what kind of questions were asked or what kind of data were analyzed to gather the evidence this kind of thing was not clarified. Maybe in the process of collecting the evidence, only a handful of teachers were asked who were not sample representative of all the teachers. Maybe the evidence was true, but only for a handful of cases while most of the institutions were not actually surveyed. If this is the case, then the evidence, upon which the author built his assertion will be weak and thereby weakening the author's position as well.
Secondly, the drop in the number of students who have cheated doesn't necessarily mean that occurrences of cheating have actually reduced. since students are less dependable than teachers. In reality, it may be the case that, cheating has actually increased as teachers are not monitoring the students but the students are not exposing all the cheaters. There is a potential that students are biased in their information thereby giving a false representation of the actual scene. If something like this is happening, then, reliance on students alone would not prove to be as successful as desired.
Finally, the survey about Groveton students doesn't provide enough data. Maybe some random students were asked or they were just asked are 'are you willing to cheat or not'. In that case,'No' would be the most probable answer as people don't usually reveal their bad ambitions. So this kind of survey may not provide an actual representation of the real scenario as they are not scientific and reliable data were not taken into account.
To prove his position to be more persuasive, the author may need to back his point by some well-articulated evidence, scientific survey rather than depending on some contrived notion and interviews which can not be attributed as surveys.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 409 350
No. of Characters: 1991 1500
No. of Different Words: 196 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.497 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.868 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.655 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 135 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 109 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 87 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.059 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.073 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.765 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.33 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.582 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.126 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 11, column 63, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...the number of students who have cheated doesnt necessarily mean that occurrences of ch...
^^^^^^
Line 11, column 139, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: Since
...nces of cheating have actually reduced. since students are less dependable than teach...
^^^^^
Line 15, column 45, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...lly, the survey about Groveton students doesnt provide enough data. Maybe some random ...
^^^^^^
Line 15, column 135, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a word
Suggestion: are
...ents were asked or they were just asked are are you willing to cheat or not. In that ca...
^^^^^^^
Line 15, column 184, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma
Suggestion: , No
...ou willing to cheat or not. In that case,No would be the most probable answer as pe...
^^^
Line 15, column 185, Rule ID: NOW[1]
Message: Did you mean 'now' (=at this moment) instead of 'no' (negation)?
Suggestion: Now
...u willing to cheat or not. In that case,No would be the most probable answer as pe...
^^
Line 15, column 232, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...d be the most probable answer as people dont usually reveal their bad ambitions. So ...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, finally, first, firstly, if, may, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, well, while, kind of
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 33.0 19.6327345309 168% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 44.0 55.5748502994 79% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2058.0 2260.96107784 91% => OK
No of words: 405.0 441.139720559 92% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.08148148148 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.48604634366 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.72119154084 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 202.0 204.123752495 99% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.498765432099 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 645.3 705.55239521 91% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 41.2502525245 57.8364921388 71% => OK
Chars per sentence: 114.333333333 119.503703932 96% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.5 23.324526521 96% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.0 5.70786347227 105% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 7.0 5.25449101796 133% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.186985114542 0.218282227539 86% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0632779013822 0.0743258471296 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0708542628298 0.0701772020484 101% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.10847543237 0.128457276422 84% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0661510844125 0.0628817314937 105% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.7 14.3799401198 95% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.48 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.43 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 95.0 98.500998004 96% => 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?
---------------------
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.