The following appeared in the editorial column of the Fern County Gazette newspaper:
"The Fern County Council made the right decision when it unanimously voted to convert the Northside branch of the county library system into a computer-skills training facility for public use. The converted facility will fill what is certain, based on national trends, to be a growing need among county residents for training in computer skills. And since our library system boasts more volumes per resident than any other system in the state, the remaining branches will adequately serve the future needs of Fern County residents."
Discuss what evidence you would need to properly evaluate the argument, and explain how that evidence might strengthen or weaken the argument.
The statement written on the Fern County Gazette newspaper seems axiomatic. It contends that the Fern County Council's decision to convert the county library system into a space for training computer skills open to public. In order to bolster the argument, the author of the column cites the unanimous votes, growing need for computer system, and current volume of the county's library system. However, there needs more evidence to effectively support the claim.
First, the author should provide more evidence regarding the unanimous vote that the decision was based on. Through the presented portion of the writing, it is difficult to determine if the voters' opinions are able to represent the idea of the entire county. Also, it is not mentioned if the people of the Fern County agreed upon making a decision based on the results of voting. If it turns out that people who participated in voting cannot fully represent the whole population of the county, the author's reasoning will be far-fetched. Additionally, if it turns out that more people disagreed upon the results of the vot, the author's argument remains weakly constructed.
Moreover, to support the argument, the author indicates the national trends of growing need for computer training. Nevertheless, the author fails to recognize that it is a trend, which means it is not a fixed, everlasting truth. With the current situation, the author can at best predict and imagine the future trend. In addition, even if the trend continues for a while, people might choose to receive training through other sources instead of going to the facility physically. Therefore, the author needs to give more evidence to prove his claim to be valid.
Furthermore, it is far-fetched for the author to assume that the Fern County will inevitably follow the national trend. It could be that the county is for people who retired, thus a majority being elderly people. If that is the case, it is required for the author to give further evidence if the town's trend reflects the national trend.
Lastly, the author's claim is based on a reason that there are more library system volumes per resident than any other systems in the state. The author continues to argue that the relatively large volume guarantees the needs for the future residents. Nevertheless, the author only gives relative amount, not the exact amount. The author needs to investigate if the exact amount is enough to meet the needs of current and future residents. Without further research, the author's contention is not valid.
All in all, because of aforementioned reasons, the author's claim is not sound. The author should provide more evidence through further intensive research to strengthen the assertion.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
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argument 1 -- not OK. This is not the argument point: Fern County Council. we may say: The Fern County Council may not make the right decision since there are already a lot of computer training institutes in the Fern County or high schools had computer programs or people are retired, no need to training...ect.
argument 2 -- not OK. In GRE/GMAT, we have to accept all data or evidence are true. It is important to find out loopholes behind surveys or studies. Loopholes mean that we accept all surveys told are true, but there are some conditions applied, for example:
It works for time A (10 years ago), but it doesn't mean it works for time B (nowadays).
It works for location A (a city, community, nation), but it doesn't mean it works for location B (another city, community, nation).
It works for people A (a manager), but it doesn't mean it works for people B (a worker).
It works for event A (one event, project... ), but it doesn't mean it works for event B (another event, project...).
It works for A and B, but not C.
argument 3 -- better to say: the national trend is for generally all people, but maybe people in Fern County are different..(mostly retired...for example)
argument 4 -- not OK. better to say: maybe the Northside branch of the county library took most of the share of volumes, if this library is changed to something else, then other libraries will be below the average.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 2.5 out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 446 350
No. of Characters: 2225 1500
No. of Different Words: 196 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.596 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.989 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.526 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 181 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 122 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 44 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.583 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.507 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.347 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.565 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.115 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 628, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...agreed upon the results of the vot, the authors argument remains weakly constructed. ...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 469, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...esidents. Without further research, the authors contention is not valid. All in all...
^^^^^^^
Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'first', 'furthermore', 'however', 'if', 'lastly', 'moreover', 'nevertheless', 'regarding', 'so', 'then', 'therefore', 'thus', 'while', 'in addition']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.24248496994 0.25644967241 95% => OK
Verbs: 0.162324649299 0.15541462614 104% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0861723446894 0.0836205057962 103% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0501002004008 0.0520304965353 96% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0220440881764 0.0272364105082 81% => OK
Prepositions: 0.11623246493 0.125424944231 93% => OK
Participles: 0.0340681362725 0.0416121511921 82% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.61317363109 2.79052419416 94% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0380761523046 0.026700313972 143% => OK
Particles: 0.00400801603206 0.001811407834 221% => OK
Determiners: 0.142284569138 0.113004496875 126% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0160320641283 0.0255425247493 63% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0060120240481 0.0127820249294 47% => Some subClauses wanted starting by 'Which, Who, What, Whom, Whose.....'
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2735.0 2731.13054187 100% => OK
No of words: 446.0 446.07635468 100% => OK
Chars per words: 6.13228699552 6.12365571057 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.5955099915 4.57801047555 100% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.434977578475 0.378187486979 115% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.295964125561 0.287650121315 103% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.179372197309 0.208842608468 86% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.109865470852 0.135150697306 81% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.61317363109 2.79052419416 94% => OK
Unique words: 206.0 207.018472906 100% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.461883408072 0.469332199767 98% => OK
Word variations: 51.1664550468 52.1807786196 98% => OK
How many sentences: 24.0 20.039408867 120% => OK
Sentence length: 18.5833333333 23.2022227129 80% => OK
Sentence length SD: 30.2168091558 57.7814097925 52% => OK
Chars per sentence: 113.958333333 141.986410481 80% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.5833333333 23.2022227129 80% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.625 0.724660767414 86% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.14285714286 117% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 3.58251231527 56% => OK
Readability: 48.1797458894 51.9672348444 93% => OK
Elegance: 1.67521367521 1.8405768891 91% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.642114660488 0.441005458295 146% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.137641781806 0.135418324435 102% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0780308445372 0.0829849096947 94% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.641526101412 0.58762219726 109% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.111053579052 0.147661913831 75% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.312640419589 0.193483328276 162% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.120433902711 0.0970749176394 124% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.530959516345 0.42659136922 124% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.059310194687 0.0774707102158 77% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.468688213681 0.312017818177 150% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.129321552455 0.0698173142475 185% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.33743842365 60% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.87684729064 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 14.0 4.82512315271 290% => Less neutral sentences wanted.
Positive topic words: 5.0 6.46551724138 77% => OK
Negative topic words: 4.0 5.36822660099 75% => OK
Neutral topic words: 13.0 2.82389162562 460% => Less neutral topic words wanted.
Total topic words: 22.0 14.657635468 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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More arguments wanted.
Rates: 54.17 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.25 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.
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Note: This is not the final score. 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.