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 this article, Dr. Karp tried to indicate that the method, called interview-centered, was more accurate than observation-centered approach, and denied the conclusion 20 years ago by using the interviews with children recently. At the first glance, the infer looks reasonable and convincing. However, it still exists some flaws in the passage, after carefully analyzing the causation he considered.
To begin with, Dr. Karp didn’t detailed describe how did Dr. Field collect the data and how many samples did he use. What’s more, it’s not reliable for an expert to make a conclusion only taking one indication. On the other hand, it’s not entirely logical to say the children were raised by the entire village as the expert observed that biological parents didn’t spend much time accompanying them. The definition of rear is wide, it may be divided into accompany and financial support. It’s possible that parent indeed went working, leaving children in the island, but they might earn more money to give their beloved kids high quality of life. Hence, it’s not necessarily true that directly jump to the conclusion Dr. Field summarized through the observation-centered approach.
Secondly, children Dr. Karp interviewed were different with Dr. Field, let alone the area isn’t exactly same. Dr. Field chose merely the island of Tertia, while Dr. Karp included the group of islands containing Tertia. In addition, the structure of family, economics, and culture might have changed drastically during 20 years. It’s likely that main occupation has shifted from agriculture to service, and the unemployed rate has decreased gradually. The whole style of people’s daily life is no longer identical compared with 2 decade ago. Accordingly, even though the interviewed-method is verified better than observed-method by other cases. The evidence Dr. Karp adopting to prove that the experiment Dr. Field was invalid may not be acceptable.
To sum up, it still leaves many existed problems for Dr. Karp to solve before he wants to prove Dr. Field’s conclusion is wrong and convinces others to believe his method is accurate.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
here goes a sample:
https://www.testbig.com/story/gre-argument-essay-topic-21-outline
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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: 340 350
No. of Characters: 1734 1500
No. of Different Words: 214 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.294 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.1 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.935 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 120 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 91 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 66 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 40 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.851 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.765 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.303 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.478 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.097 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 251, Rule ID: A_INFINITVE[1]
Message: Probably a wrong construction: a/the + infinitive
...children recently. At the first glance, the infer looks reasonable and convincing. Howeve...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 545, Rule ID: CD_NN[1]
Message: Possible agreement error. The noun 'decade' seems to be countable, so consider using: 'decades'.
Suggestion: decades
... is no longer identical compared with 2 decade ago. Accordingly, even though the inter...
^^^^^^
Line 7, column 190, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...hers to believe his method is accurate.
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
accordingly, but, first, hence, however, if, look, may, second, secondly, so, still, while, in addition, to begin with, to sum up, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 11.0 19.6327345309 56% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 4.0 12.9520958084 31% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 17.0 28.8173652695 59% => OK
Preposition: 38.0 55.5748502994 68% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1846.0 2260.96107784 82% => OK
No of words: 337.0 441.139720559 76% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.47774480712 5.12650576532 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.28457229495 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.12873081191 2.78398813304 112% => OK
Unique words: 220.0 204.123752495 108% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.652818991098 0.468620217663 139% => OK
syllable_count: 562.5 705.55239521 80% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 42.0574660414 57.8364921388 73% => OK
Chars per sentence: 108.588235294 119.503703932 91% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.8235294118 23.324526521 85% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.70588235294 5.70786347227 153% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.315433521866 0.218282227539 145% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0888506999928 0.0743258471296 120% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0726614577078 0.0701772020484 104% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.172925615323 0.128457276422 135% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0686938966724 0.0628817314937 109% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.3 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.3550499002 90% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.5 12.5979740519 115% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.5 8.32208582834 114% => OK
difficult_words: 105.0 98.500998004 107% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => 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.