Fifteen years ago, Omega University implemented a new procedure that encouraged students to evaluate the teaching effectiveness of all their professors. Since that time, Omega professors have begun to assign higher grades in their classes, and overall student grade averages at Omega have risen by 30 percent. Potential employers, looking at this dramatic rise in grades, believe that grades at Omega are inflated and do not accurately reflect student achievement; as a result, Omega graduates have not been as successful at getting jobs as have graduates from nearby Alpha University. To enable its graduates to secure better jobs, Omega University should terminate student evaluation of professors.
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 given statement, the author suggests that Omega University should terminate student evaluation of professors in order to increase the employment rate of its graduates. However, the argument is flawed for numerous following reasons, as it relies on unwarranted assumptions.
Firstly, the author hastily assumes there is clear causal relationship between the students evaluating professors and the raise of overall student grade average. However, the author provides no adequate evidence to substantiate this assumption that professors have been given higher grades to their students only because of the evaluation procedure. It is entirely possible that the grading standards has been lowered, that students study harder than before, or that professors provide better teaching, which in turn assisted students’ learning. Had the argument provided information regarding that professors have given higher grades only because of the students evaluation procedure, the argument would have been more cogent.
Secondly, even if the assumption above is somehow guaranteed to be true, the author still unreasonably assumes that local employers hire university graduates based only on their grades. However, common sense tells us that there are various factors taken in consideration in an employment procedure. It is possible, for example, that the graduates of Omega University do not have as much extra curricular experience as have the Alpha University graduates. Without excluding all other possible factors except average grade, the argument would not be convincing.
Lastly, the author assumes that only if they terminate the student evaluation system, the employment rate of their graduates would increase. Although this might be the case, it is possible that the low employment rate of Omega University is not due to its student evaluation system but to other reasons. For example, graduates of Omega University are relatively richer than that of Alpha University, so that they do not need to find a job straight away. Or, perhaps, Alpha University provides a wider range of courses that are more favorable for the local employers, whereas Omega University is heavily focusing on pure science and literature courses. If this is the case, the employment rate would not increase even if Omega University terminate students evaluation system.
To sum, the argument is a specious one. Because the argument makes several unwarranted assumptions, it fails to make cogent cast that Omega University should terminate its students evaluation of their professors. To strengthen it, the author should provide further evidences regarding the causal relationship between the students’ evaluation and their average grades; local employers hire graduates only based on their grades; and the termination of the evaluation would surely improve the employment rate of Omega University graduates.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- is somehow duplicated to argument 2.
here goes the argument:
To enable its graduates to secure better jobs, Omega University should terminate student evaluation of professors.
----------------
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 434 350
No. of Characters: 2397 1500
No. of Different Words: 180 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.564 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.523 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.775 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 193 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 160 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 117 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 80 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.111 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.852 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.722 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.371 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.582 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.093 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 661, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'students'' or 'student's'?
Suggestion: students'; student's
...given higher grades only because of the students evaluation procedure, the argument woul...
^^^^^^^^
Discourse Markers used:
['but', 'first', 'firstly', 'however', 'if', 'lastly', 'regarding', 'second', 'secondly', 'so', 'still', 'then', 'whereas', 'for example', 'of course']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.289527720739 0.25644967241 113% => OK
Verbs: 0.158110882957 0.15541462614 102% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0698151950719 0.0836205057962 83% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0698151950719 0.0520304965353 134% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0369609856263 0.0272364105082 136% => Less pronouns wanted. Try not to use 'you, I, they, he...' as the subject of a sentence
Prepositions: 0.11909650924 0.125424944231 95% => OK
Participles: 0.0431211498973 0.0416121511921 104% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.89904241059 2.79052419416 104% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0205338809035 0.026700313972 77% => OK
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.0903490759754 0.113004496875 80% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0184804928131 0.0255425247493 72% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0041067761807 0.0127820249294 32% => Some subClauses wanted starting by 'Which, Who, What, Whom, Whose.....'
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2905.0 2731.13054187 106% => OK
No of words: 434.0 446.07635468 97% => OK
Chars per words: 6.6935483871 6.12365571057 109% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.56428161445 4.57801047555 100% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.447004608295 0.378187486979 118% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.387096774194 0.287650121315 135% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.297235023041 0.208842608468 142% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.200460829493 0.135150697306 148% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.89904241059 2.79052419416 104% => OK
Unique words: 192.0 207.018472906 93% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.442396313364 0.469332199767 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
Word variations: 48.1961244543 52.1807786196 92% => OK
How many sentences: 18.0 20.039408867 90% => OK
Sentence length: 24.1111111111 23.2022227129 104% => OK
Sentence length SD: 57.355615825 57.7814097925 99% => OK
Chars per sentence: 161.388888889 141.986410481 114% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.1111111111 23.2022227129 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.833333333333 0.724660767414 115% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 3.58251231527 28% => OK
Readability: 62.8207885305 51.9672348444 121% => OK
Elegance: 1.70542635659 1.8405768891 93% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.376394626795 0.441005458295 85% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.11095418344 0.135418324435 82% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0687539733803 0.0829849096947 83% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.581852408173 0.58762219726 99% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.132868563607 0.147661913831 90% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.164679262067 0.193483328276 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0771942947325 0.0970749176394 80% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.43227853677 0.42659136922 101% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0631167268423 0.0774707102158 81% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.270587382941 0.312017818177 87% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0519745554042 0.0698173142475 74% => The ideas may be duplicated in paragraphs.
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.33743842365 96% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.87684729064 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.82512315271 41% => OK
Positive topic words: 8.0 6.46551724138 124% => OK
Negative topic words: 8.0 5.36822660099 149% => OK
Neutral topic words: 0.0 2.82389162562 0% => More neutral topic words wanted.
Total topic words: 16.0 14.657635468 109% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
---------------------
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.