The following appeared in an article written by Dr. Karp, an anthropologist.
"Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Tertia and concluded from his observations that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village rather than by their own biological parents. However, my recent interviews with children living in the group of islands that includes Tertia show that these children spend much more time talking about their biological parents than about other adults in the village. This research of mine proves that Dr. Field's conclusion about Tertian village culture is invalid and thus that the observation-centered approach to studying cultures is invalid as well. The interview-centered method that my team of graduate students is currently using in Tertia will establish a much more accurate understanding of child-rearing traditions there and in other island cultures."
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 preceding statement, the author claims that his way of research, interview-centered method, will produce accurate findings of the child-rearing culture in Tertia than Dr. Field's observation-centered technique. He cites various evidence of such studies in some group of islands including Tertia to support his claim. Although the shreds of evidence may seem to have merit to bolster the claim, a scrupulous examination shows the poor reason and grounds on which the conclusion stands. The author needs to provide additional explanation to bridge the gap between the premises and the conclusion.
The initial problem with this argument is the flaw in the author's claim that recent interviews in the group of islands including Tertia found the children talking about their biological parents will necessarily mean that they are grown with care from their biological parents only. However, the evidence does not help to make the conclusion reliable. The author does not mention the types of questions asked to those children. Perhaps the interviewer asked about who gave birth to them, what their parent's names are or said to explain about their parents in detail. Moreover, there is also the possibility of negative replies from the children due to their hatred towards their biological parents during the interviews. For an instance, if the children's parents abandoned them to thrive on their own and the society nurtured the children criticizing about their parents in front of them, the children might have developed antipathy towards them. In this case, when anyone asks about their parents, their reply might be hostile towards their parents the whole time remembering the hard times of their life. If this is found to be true that the interview questions were only about their parents, especially about the biological family, then the argument is sure to be weakened.
Furthermore, the premise on which the author bases his argument, that the interviews was conducted in a group of islands including Tertia is ambiguous and likely to pull the case downward. The researcher mentions that he completed the interview-centered approach in the group of islands vaguely but does not specifically say that the Tertia's children were questioned. Moreover, at the end he mentions that his graduate students "are currently" conducting the research in Tertia which increases the enigma even more. It points to the direction that the initial interviews taken by the author were in the islands to the vicinity of Tertia and not exactly Tertia. We do not know for sure about the similarities and differences in these islands. The cultures and traditions within even two villages are different let alone two different islands. The author is unjustifiably assuming that he will find the same kind of findings in the Tertia as that of other nearby islands. Unless the author accounts for substantial evidentiary support for his premise, the argument will undermine itself.
To sum up, I can come to the agreement that the observational approach by Dr. Field might not be accurate and his findings could not be accurately utilized for learning about the child-bearing traditions in Tertia and in other islands only if the author agrees to fix up his flaws in the warranted claims and premises and provides more support for his evidence. Only after he presents the final findings obtained from the graduate students in Tertia, the argument could be examined for further discussion.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 8 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 8 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 559 350
No. of Characters: 2872 1500
No. of Different Words: 256 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.862 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.138 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.785 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 210 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 170 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 121 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 65 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.409 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.324 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.313 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.313 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.168 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, furthermore, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, kind of, talking about, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 52.0 28.8173652695 180% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 77.0 55.5748502994 139% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2928.0 2260.96107784 130% => OK
No of words: 559.0 441.139720559 127% => OK
Chars per words: 5.23792486583 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.86242540663 4.56307096286 107% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.86145449477 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 268.0 204.123752495 131% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.479427549195 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 885.6 705.55239521 126% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 67.1154334334 57.8364921388 116% => OK
Chars per sentence: 133.090909091 119.503703932 111% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.4090909091 23.324526521 109% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.31818181818 5.70786347227 76% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.158436794702 0.218282227539 73% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0489129077245 0.0743258471296 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0453688328589 0.0701772020484 65% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.104169715172 0.128457276422 81% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0273087779683 0.0628817314937 43% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.0 14.3799401198 111% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.41 12.5979740519 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.69 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 135.0 98.500998004 137% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.