The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a local newspaper in Masontown:
“If we want to save money on municipal garbage disposal fees, we need to encourage our residents to recycle more. Late last year, our neighboring town, Hayesworth, passed a law requiring that all households recycle paper and glass, or pay a fine. Since that time, Hayesworth has seen its garbage disposal costs significantly decrease. If we implemented an advertising campaign encouraging our residents to recycle, Masontown would also save money on disposal of its waste.”
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered 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 to the editor of a local newspaper in Maasontown, it is stated that residents should be encouraged to recycle more in order to save money on municipal garbae disposal fees. The author came to this conclusion based on the law passed by Hayesworth late last year which saw a decrese in its garbage disposal cost. However, before this recommendation can be properly evaluated, three questins must be answered.
First of all, are Hayesworth town and Masontown roughly comparable? what if Hayesworth town residents are law abiding and hence the law produced desired results? It is possible that the people of Haysworth are law abiding people and Mason town people are not and so passing the same law in Mason town may not decrease garbage disposal cost. Also, the law enforcers at Masontown may be easy to bribe and so even when the law is broken by a resident, the resident may bribe the law enforecer and get away with the crime. If either of these scenarios has merit, then the conclsuion drawn in the original argument is significantly weakened.
Second, will an advertising campaign encourage residents to recycle? The author assumes that implementation of an advertising campaign will encourage residents to recycle. It is possibe that residents do not pay attention to the campaigns and hence the campaign may not produce the desired results. It is also possible that the advertising campaign does not get to all residents. If these scenarios prove to be true, then the conclusion drawn from the original argument is significantly weakened.
Further, do all residents know how to recycle? The author assumes that all residents know how to recycle and implementing a law to recycle will be effective. It is possible that not all residents know how to recycle and may need to attend trainings on how to recycle to be good at it. If this proves to be true, the conclusion drawn from the original argument does not hold water.
In conclusion, the argument as it stands now is considerably flawed due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. If the author is able to provide more evidence and answer the questions above, then it may be possible to properly evaluate the viability of the proposed recommendation to encourage residents to recycle more.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 2 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 8 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 382 350
No. of Characters: 1855 1500
No. of Different Words: 161 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.421 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.856 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.804 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 134 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 112 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 84 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.222 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.257 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.722 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.35 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.593 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.139 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 69, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: What
... town and Masontown roughly comparable? what if Hayesworth town residents are law ab...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, hence, however, if, may, second, so, then, in conclusion, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1903.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 382.0 441.139720559 87% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.98167539267 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.42095241839 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.86594701838 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 166.0 204.123752495 81% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.434554973822 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 608.4 705.55239521 86% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 42.3349001099 57.8364921388 73% => OK
Chars per sentence: 100.157894737 119.503703932 84% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.1052631579 23.324526521 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.36842105263 5.70786347227 77% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.244750502964 0.218282227539 112% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0790558311785 0.0743258471296 106% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0783651988885 0.0701772020484 112% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.137424508668 0.128457276422 107% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0831865981365 0.0628817314937 132% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.1 14.3799401198 84% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.6 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.73 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 75.0 98.500998004 76% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.