The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a local newspaper.
"Commuters complain that increased rush-hour traffic on Blue Highway between the suburbs and the city center has doubled their commuting time. The favored proposal of the motorists' lobby is to widen the highway, adding an additional lane of traffic. But last year's addition of a lane to the nearby Green Highway was followed by a worsening of traffic jams on it. A better alternative is to add a bicycle lane to Blue Highway. Many area residents are keen bicyclists. A bicycle lane would encourage them to use bicycles to commute, and so would reduce rush-hour traffic rather than fostering an increase."
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.
Stating that commuters complain that increased rush-hour traffic on Blue highway between the suburbs and the city center has doubled their commuting time, the editor of local news claims that the resolution of this problem is to add a bicycle lane to Blue Highway rather than broadening the highway. To justify her assumption, she said that last year's addition of a lane to the nearby Green highways was followed by a worsening of traffic jams on it and many area residents are keen bicyclists. Careful scrutiny reveals that there are many problematic assumptions in her conclusion
First, she hastily assumes that adding an additional lane to Blue highway would be worsening the traffic jam. However, there is a possibility that the case of Blue Highways is not similar to Green Highway. For example, the number of the lanes of Green highways lane is originally little, the additional lane is not efficient to reduce traffic jam. Also, worsening of traffic jam in Green Highway is not because of adding another lane, but because of increasing of the number of users of the highway. Until the author gives us additional information about why an additional lane worsened traffic, we cannot accept her sayings
Second, if we concede that worsening traffic jam in Green Highways is due to add another lane, there is another improper assumption. The editor says that there are people who like riding bicycles. So, If a bicycle lane is added to the Blue Highways, they will commute by bicycle. However, if the number of people who like bicycles is small to affect the amount of traffic, adding a bicycle lane is totally unuseful. Also, there is no guarantee that the people will like commuting with bicycles in the future. If the author gives us specified data about the ratio of the bicycle-commuters, it is dubious as it stands
Finally, if we admit other problematic assumptions, however, there remains a critical problem. There's no specified evidence that worsened traffic jam in Blue HIghways is a result of the short number of lanes. Common sense tells us that there are many complicated factors that affect traffic jam such as increasing number of car-commuters or traffic signals.
the author has to show the real reason why traffic is increased, if not, we can not properly this argument
To conclude, this argument has several local flaws. To make this argument more persuasive, the author must propose additional information about the reason why an additional lane makes traffic worse on Green Highways and the ratio of bicycle commuters. To evaluate better, she must give us a real reason for increasing traffic in Blue Highways
Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
Need to argue against the conclusion always. For this topic it is:
A bicycle lane would encourage them to use bicycles to commute, and so would reduce rush-hour traffic rather than fostering an increase.
---------------------
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 440 350
No. of Characters: 2152 1500
No. of Different Words: 186 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.58 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.891 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.594 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 168 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 129 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 70 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 43 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.3 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.55 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.345 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.545 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.18 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 347, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'years'' or 'year's'?
Suggestion: years'; year's
...tify her assumption, she said that last years addition of a lane to the nearby Green ...
^^^^^
Line 3, column 33, Rule ID: ADD_AN_ADDITIONAL[1]
Message: This phrase might be redundant. Use simply 'adding a lane'.
Suggestion: adding a lane
...sion First, she hastily assumes that adding an additional lane to Blue highway would be worsening the ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 96, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: There's
...ever, there remains a critical problem. Theres no specified evidence that worsened tra...
^^^^^^
Line 8, column 1, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: The
...r of car-commuters or traffic signals. the author has to show the real reason why ...
^^^
Line 10, column 253, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...ays and the ratio of bicycle commuters. To evaluate better, she must give us a rea...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, however, if, second, so, as to, for example, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 36.0 28.8173652695 125% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2211.0 2260.96107784 98% => OK
No of words: 440.0 441.139720559 100% => OK
Chars per words: 5.025 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.57997565096 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.67599425409 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 192.0 204.123752495 94% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.436363636364 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 696.6 705.55239521 99% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 63.0584394194 57.8364921388 109% => OK
Chars per sentence: 130.058823529 119.503703932 109% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.8823529412 23.324526521 111% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.64705882353 5.70786347227 81% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.250595433222 0.218282227539 115% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0940625808933 0.0743258471296 127% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.111623644087 0.0701772020484 159% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.139968661752 0.128457276422 109% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.113942505839 0.0628817314937 181% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.2 14.3799401198 106% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.19 12.5979740519 97% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.5 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 101.0 98.500998004 103% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 17.5 12.3882235529 141% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 Out of 6
---------------------
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.