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 islande 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.
The author’s, Dr.Karp, main point is to criticize the previous research of Dr. Field on how children are raised in the island of Tertia and to impone that his way of making a research is going to have very good results. However he makes many assumptions that make his argument flawing at best.
First of all he denigrates Field’s observation because his results are different from the one recently made by Dr. Karp, but there’s no evidence that his research, made by interviews, is going to give us the best results. In fact many children may lie or have a distorted perception of what is happening in their education. They may feel like they’re spending much more time with their parents, but maybe in reality they spend way more with the rest of the community. To make his statement stronger he should assure that the facts correspond to the results of the interviews.
Moreover, even if this results are correct, there’s no way we can tell that Dr. Field was wrong, since his studies were made 20 years ago, and in such a long time there may have been a great change in this period, and while during the precedent research children were reared by the village, now they stay more with their parents. Dr. Karp should show us that in this period nothing has changed in the way Teartian people educate their children, if he wants to lambaste Field’s studies.
Even if Field was wrong, it’s not correct to say that the method he used (observation-centered) is always worse than Karp’s one. In fact Field may have done other mistakes indipendent from the methon for which he opted. If the author wants to assert that the observation-centered method draws to incorrect conclusion, he should at least give us way more examples in which such a method has failed.
The last assumption is that his interview-centered method is going to give much more accurated details of traditions and education even in other islands. This is not necessarily true: let’s assume that his results are indeed correct (which still has to be demonstrated), this doesn’t mean that getting information from other islands will have such a good ending with the same method. Maybe in the other islands they are diffident toward interviewers and won’t answer properly. Before making such assumption the anthropologist must be sure that the method will still work in the other islands.
In the end, Karp has made a statement full of assumptions without really making the effort in trying convincing the readers with fact. If he wants to make people believe him he has to: make the results of the interviews undiscutible, show us that there has been no major changes in Tertia’s method of education, give some more examples in which observation-centered studies couldn’t get proper informations, and tell us why he is so sure that if his method actually works in Tertia, it will work on the other islands, too.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
samples:
https://www.testbig.com/story/gre-argument-essay-topic-21-outline
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 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: 500 350
No. of Characters: 2329 1500
No. of Different Words: 224 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.729 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.658 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.695 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 146 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 102 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 64 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 40 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 29.412 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 15.504 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.765 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.355 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.575 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.199 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 23, Rule ID: SENTENCE_WHITESPACE
Message: Add a space between sentences
Suggestion: Karp
The author's, Dr.Karp, main point is to criticize the previou...
^^^^
Line 1, column 179, Rule ID: A_UNCOUNTABLE[1]
Message: Uncountable nouns are usually not used with an indefinite article. Use simply 'research'.
Suggestion: research
...ia and to impone that his way of making a research is going to have very good results. How...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 226, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: However,
...rch is going to have very good results. However he makes many assumptions that make his...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 490, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “Before” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...viewers and won't answer properly. Before making such assumption the anthropologi...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, first, however, if, may, moreover, really, so, still, while, as to, at least, in fact, such as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 55.0 28.8173652695 191% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 64.0 55.5748502994 115% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2448.0 2260.96107784 108% => OK
No of words: 495.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 4.94545454545 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.71684168287 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.97733094245 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 237.0 204.123752495 116% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.478787878788 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 729.9 705.55239521 103% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 2.0 8.76447105788 23% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 29.0 22.8473053892 127% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 86.017822246 57.8364921388 149% => OK
Chars per sentence: 144.0 119.503703932 120% => OK
Words per sentence: 29.1176470588 23.324526521 125% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.23529411765 5.70786347227 127% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.183184556551 0.218282227539 84% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0654364826284 0.0743258471296 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0541712178891 0.0701772020484 77% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.110122197736 0.128457276422 86% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0378026307491 0.0628817314937 60% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.4 14.3799401198 114% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 50.5 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.02 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.26 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 100.0 98.500998004 102% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.6 11.1389221557 122% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.