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.
Dr. Karp argues that Dr. Field’s conclusion about the Tertian village culture us invalid and his interview centered method to is better to establish an accurate understanding of the child rearing cultures in Tertia and other islands as well. This argument by Dr. Karp has 3 flaws which weaken his argument.
To begin with, Dr. Field’s study predated Dr. Karp’s study by about 20 years. People who were children when Dr. Field visited the islands would have been adults by the time Dr. Karp visited the island. The children Dr. Karp and his team interviewed would not even have been born at the time Dr. Field noted his observations. Dr. Karp fails to take into consideration the time gap between bot the studies and ignores the possibility of a shift in the culture of the islands. Cultures worldwide were more joint family oriented earlier and slowly shifted to the nuclear family culture that exists now. The same may have happened in Tertia. Therefore, overlooking the aspect of a cultural shift weakens Dr. Karp’s argument. Perhaps if Dr. Karp’s provides a study in which he argues 20 years is not a long enough period for a cultural shift, his argument may have been more conclusive.
Secondly, Dr. Karp extrapolates Dr. Field’s observation to draw a wider conclusion that Dr. Field never intended to. Even if we assume Dr. Fields conclusion about Tertian village culture is invalid, one cannot extend that conclusion and apply it to dismiss observation-centered approaches to studying cultures entirely. Dr. Karp does not provide sufficient evidence, may be in the form of a percentage-based comparison of the number of observation-centred approaches on how many were right and how many were wrong. 1 erroneous study doesn’t rule out empirical evidence entirely. . Also, Dr. Field’s observations and conclusion were limited only to the island of Teria, while Dr. Karp tries to extend Dr. Field’s study to arrive at a conclusion on the study of other island cultures as well. Islands are considerably isolated, and thus it is completely possible that Tertia has a unique culture that is not shared with any other islands. Dr. Karp fails to answer this question in his argument.
In addition to the 2 points stated above, Dr. Karp argues that the interview-centred method that he and his students are using will establish a much more real understanding of child rearing traditions there. Dr. Karp does not provide any evidence on the success of this method elsewhere in similar anthropological studies, neither does he justify why his method would be the best. If he had some data to back his claim regarding the success rate of interview-centred approaches, his argument would be more cohesive.
In conclusion, the Argument of Dr. Karp to invalidate Dr. Field’s study and conclude that an interview-based approach is the best is very weak and would need a lot of evidence and questions answered before it stands any ground.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 8 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 488 350
No. of Characters: 2401 1500
No. of Different Words: 222 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.7 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.92 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.894 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 169 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 127 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 83 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 44 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.238 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.778 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.619 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.383 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.544 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.176 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 580, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Don't put a space before the full stop
Suggestion: .
...t rule out empirical evidence entirely. . Also, Dr. Field’s observations and conc...
^
Line 8, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
..., his argument would be more cohesive. In conclusion, the Argument of Dr. Karp ...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, if, look, may, regarding, second, secondly, so, therefore, thus, well, while, in addition, in conclusion, to begin with
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 : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2475.0 2260.96107784 109% => OK
No of words: 487.0 441.139720559 110% => OK
Chars per words: 5.08213552361 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.69766713281 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.98301468526 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 228.0 204.123752495 112% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.4681724846 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 740.7 705.55239521 105% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 3.0 8.76447105788 34% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 59.3338301592 57.8364921388 103% => OK
Chars per sentence: 117.857142857 119.503703932 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.1904761905 23.324526521 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.95238095238 5.70786347227 104% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => 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: 0.313141345841 0.218282227539 143% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.112700529143 0.0743258471296 152% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0706561839181 0.0701772020484 101% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.197439291036 0.128457276422 154% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.062042036481 0.0628817314937 99% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.1 14.3799401198 98% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 56.59 48.3550499002 117% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.48 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.18 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 105.0 98.500998004 107% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4 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.