The following appeared as an editorial in the student newspaper of Groveton College.
"To combat the recently reported dramatic rise in cheating among college students, colleges and universities should adopt honor codes similar to Groveton's, which calls for students to agree not to cheat in their academic endeavors and to notify a faculty member if they suspect that others have cheated. Groveton's honor code replaced an old-fashioned system in which teachers closely monitored students. Under that system, teachers reported an average of thirty cases of cheating per year. The honor code has proven far more successful: in the first year it was in place, students reported twenty-one cases of cheating; five years later, this figure had dropped to fourteen. Moreover, in a recent survey conducted by the Groveton honor council, a majority of students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without."
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 of the article makes a valid argument, one that would be correct if its premises were true. However, the conclusion relies on three unsubstantiated assumptions for which there are no clear evidence.
First, the author assumes that students in Groveton College are trustworthy all the time. With the help of the new system established at the college, students are expected to report cheating situations once they witness. As much as one sees from the article, there is no obligation for students to report such incidents. What if a student sees one of his friends cheating and does not let the administration know that? Is there a sanction for this particular student? In addition, why would he take initiative and contact the faculty, and put himself into trouble while he can easily take his exam and act as if nothing happened. Moreover, is a student expected to take care of his exam or watch the class to catch someone cheating all the time? As seen, the assumption is invalid as a student will easily evade a rife with her or his classmates.
Secondly, taking what students tell during the surveys at face value may be misleading. According to the memo, the results of the survey realised by the Groveton honor council shew that students trusted new system and stressed that they would be less likely to cheat with the new code in force. It may be quite possible that, since students found new system easier to handle and transgress they wanted it to be utilized for good. Maybe the students established such a web that every student can get the correct answers without effort. For example, has the council made any investigation about the grades of the students after the honor code? Is there an unexplainable increase in the grades or not? What the council should have done was in fact to closely monitor exams and get the ideas of faculty member regarding the applicability of the system.
Thirdly, the writer of the article presumes that decrease in the number of reported cases is a good sign for the evaluation of the honor code. It may be just the opposite. Maybe there are actually students who wish to report cheating cases but, since teachers are not closely watching students, some of the leaders in the class created a kind of gang hindering the actions of such students. Maybe they are threatening them, maybe they are distracting them to get low grades during the exams. Under this circumstances, the effect of teachers' control on the process should not be sidelined. There must some elders in control of the young so that they will be aware of the fact that if something wrong is done, there is someone to intervene. Hence, the conclusion of the writer seems unsound.
Overall, the article leaves too many questions unanswered which hinders the reliability of the article and make it more questionable.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 9 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 7 2
No. of Sentences: 25 15
No. of Words: 487 350
No. of Characters: 2297 1500
No. of Different Words: 242 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.698 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.717 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.53 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 156 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 123 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 74 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 34 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.48 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.91 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.263 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.458 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.079 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 724, Rule ID: HE_VERB_AGR[7]
Message: The word 'someone' in subjunctive clause must be used with a base form of a verb: 'cheat'.
Suggestion: cheat
...xam or watch the class to catch someone cheating all the time? As seen, the assumption i...
^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 296, Rule ID: SOME_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'some'.
Suggestion: some
...hers are not closely watching students, some of the leaders in the class created a kind of ...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 499, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[1]
Message: Did you mean 'these'?
Suggestion: these
... get low grades during the exams. Under this circumstances, the effect of teachers c...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, first, hence, however, if, may, moreover, regarding, second, secondly, so, third, thirdly, while, for example, in addition, in fact, kind of
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 59.0 55.5748502994 106% => 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: 2359.0 2260.96107784 104% => OK
No of words: 487.0 441.139720559 110% => OK
Chars per words: 4.84394250513 5.12650576532 94% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.69766713281 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.61280220566 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 248.0 204.123752495 121% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.509240246407 0.468620217663 109% => OK
syllable_count: 734.4 705.55239521 104% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 43.7392272451 57.8364921388 76% => OK
Chars per sentence: 94.36 119.503703932 79% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.48 23.324526521 84% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.2 5.70786347227 109% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => 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: 0.226362399448 0.218282227539 104% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0623020606104 0.0743258471296 84% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0561980822464 0.0701772020484 80% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0994764002005 0.128457276422 77% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0717937405235 0.0628817314937 114% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.1 14.3799401198 77% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 60.65 48.3550499002 125% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.5 12.197005988 78% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.79 12.5979740519 86% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.15 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 110.0 98.500998004 112% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => 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: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.