The following appeared as a letter to the editor from a Central Plaza store owner.
"Over the past two years, the number of shoppers in Central Plaza has been steadily decreasing while the popularity of skateboarding has increased dramatically. Many Central Plaza store owners believe that the decrease in their business is due to the number of skateboard users in the plaza. There has also been a dramatic increase in the amount of litter and vandalism throughout the plaza. Thus, we recommend that the city prohibit skateboarding in Central Plaza. If skateboarding is prohibited here, we predict that business in Central Plaza will return to its previously high levels."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
In the letter, the writer insists that prohibiting skateboarding will result in recovering business of Central Plaza. It is supported by the changes in Central Plaza with the advent of skateboard riders: the decreased sales of stores and the increased litter and vandalism. While the recommendation of letter may make sense, there are several questions to be answered in order to vindicate the causality.
Firstly, were there any changes to the stores in Central Plaza? Whether the stores two years ago and now are identical is an important matter. If there were some changes, the sales or the number of shoppers cannot be directly compared. For example, those who visit Central Plaza are mostly aiming to take a rest apart from the urban area and works. When there is a bookstore in Central Plaza, more people will be willing to stop by and get some books to read lying at the plaza. In contrast, the grocery store near the plaza will have far fewer shoppers as people might not want to be stressed to think about somewhat related to housework such as what to buy for dinner or whether they need to buy toilet papers as it almost runs out at home. If a bookstore near the plaza has been changed to a grocery store, or similarly a certain store changed to another type of store, the decreased shoppers may not be related to the increased number of skateboard users. As a result, the recommendation of letter is significantly weakened in this case.
Secondly, has the number of people gathered in Central plaza has increased? Probably, new tall buildings might have been built around Central Plaza within two years increasing the number of people near the plaza area. Or perhaps another plaza in the city has been shut down, making Central Plaza the only place for picnics in the city. In either case, more people will gather at Central Plaza, the amount of litter they throw will also increase, and the plaza will be messier. If the entire number of people who go to Central Plaza other than skateboard users has increased, the writer cannot simply blame the skateboard riders. If the mess and vandalism in Central Plaza are related to other plaza visitors, not the skateboard users, the recommendation will not be able to hold water anymore.
To sum up, the letter, as it stands now, is considerably flawed due to the reliance on the unwarranted assumptions in drawing the recommendation to recover the adverse situation in the Central Plaza stores. In order to strongly insist on the suggested recommendation is appropriate, the writer will have to clearly answer the questions pertaining to the changes in stores in Central Plaza and the number of plaza visitors.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 457 350
No. of Characters: 2164 1500
No. of Different Words: 199 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.624 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.735 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.551 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 155 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 103 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 61 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 42 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.053 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.703 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.632 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.375 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.375 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.108 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, firstly, if, may, second, secondly, similarly, so, while, apart from, for example, in contrast, such as, as a result, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 4.0 13.6137724551 29% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 8.0 28.8173652695 28% => OK
Preposition: 72.0 55.5748502994 130% => OK
Nominalization: 7.0 16.3942115768 43% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2218.0 2260.96107784 98% => OK
No of words: 457.0 441.139720559 104% => OK
Chars per words: 4.8533916849 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.62358717085 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.61902110169 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 210.0 204.123752495 103% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.459518599562 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 699.3 705.55239521 99% => 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: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 53.1349611812 57.8364921388 92% => OK
Chars per sentence: 116.736842105 119.503703932 98% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.0526315789 23.324526521 103% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.36842105263 5.70786347227 129% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.423454373031 0.218282227539 194% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.16474794326 0.0743258471296 222% => Sentence topic similarity is high.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0782521465432 0.0701772020484 112% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.293887490241 0.128457276422 229% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0495672001059 0.0628817314937 79% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.4 14.3799401198 93% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 55.58 48.3550499002 115% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.15 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.07 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 94.0 98.500998004 95% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.