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 this argument, the store owner finds the number of shoppers has been decreasing and concludes that is due to the recent increase of skateboarders. The owner even suggests the city to ban skateboarding in his store. However, the speculation is entirely based on logically unconvincing assumptions. Without providing further evidence, the writer's statement is unpersuasive as well as unwarranted.
First of all, the decrease of shopper does not necessarily have correlation with the increase of skateboarders. These two phenomena may just happen in coincidence. If the owner believes the business decrease should have something to do with skateboarding, he/she should conduct a survey, namely, questionnaire, to inquire shoppers about the reason why they are unwilling to visit the plaza. The survey can also include shoppers' opinions toward skateboarding. By doing so, we can determine whether a relationship between the shopper decline and the skateboarding popularity exists, as the writer insists.
Another important question to be addressed is the true reason of decreasing number of shoppers. It can be national economic recession which results all citizens to be too frugal to go shopping. We can determine the possible reason by doing thorough investigations about all similar plazas among the city. Probably the owner will find that most plazas have experiencing downturns and can conclude it's due to the bad economy.
Finally, the owner notices the amount of litter and vandalism in the plaza has been increasing as well, which I think is a good reason why shoppers were unwilling to visit. Nevertheless, with no further investigation, the writer directly infer the litter and vandalism was made by skateboarders but not other people such as beggars or mendicants. To avoid making such a completely arbitrary conclusion, similarly, he/she should find the cause of littering and vandalism, by putting monitoring cameras, perhaps.
To sum up, the argument lacks credibility to conclude that the decrease of shoppers was resulted from the increase of the popularity of skateboarding in the plaza. I believe that more proof regarding the issues discussed above is required to make the store owner's conclusion acceptable.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 348 350
No. of Characters: 1842 1500
No. of Different Words: 194 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.319 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.293 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.041 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 142 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 115 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 90 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 56 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.333 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.565 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.296 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.539 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.097 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 341, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'writers'' or 'writer's'?
Suggestion: writers'; writer's
...Without providing further evidence, the writers statement is unpersuasive as well as un...
^^^^^^^
Line 17, column 258, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'owners'' or 'owner's'?
Suggestion: owners'; owner's
...sed above is required to make the store owners conclusion acceptable.
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, however, if, may, nevertheless, regarding, similarly, so, well, i think, such as, as well as, first of all, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => 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: 1902.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 346.0 441.139720559 78% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.49710982659 5.12650576532 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.31289638616 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.14334494787 2.78398813304 113% => OK
Unique words: 202.0 204.123752495 99% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.583815028902 0.468620217663 125% => OK
syllable_count: 591.3 705.55239521 84% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 44.4212439445 57.8364921388 77% => OK
Chars per sentence: 105.666666667 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.2222222222 23.324526521 82% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.0 5.70786347227 140% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => 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: 0.231054078345 0.218282227539 106% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0703709179386 0.0743258471296 95% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0650038901522 0.0701772020484 93% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.13458139683 0.128457276422 105% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0466988950678 0.0628817314937 74% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.1 14.3799401198 98% => 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: 14.62 12.5979740519 116% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.28 8.32208582834 112% => OK
difficult_words: 103.0 98.500998004 105% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => 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.