The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Parkville Daily newspaper.
"Throughout the country last year, as more and more children below the age of nine participated in youth-league sports, over 40,000 of these young players suffered injuries. When interviewed for a recent study, youth-league soccer players in several major cities also reported psychological pressure exerted by coaches and parents to win games. Furthermore, education experts say that long practice sessions for these sports take away time that could be used for academic activities. Since the disadvantages outweigh any advantages, we in Parkville should discontinue organized athletic competition for children under nine."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The author of the letter sent to the editor is convinced that athletic competition for chilren below the age of nine is full of disadvantages. His/Her views are based on the interviews of soccer players and the arguments of educational experts. However, the author fails to acknowledge the vagueness of the conclusions drawn by these studies.
Firstly, the argument suggesting an increase in the injuries of young players due to participation in youth-league sports is flaweed. Although the assumption is that the injuries are due to sports, there is no patent proof of the same. What if the children got injured due to their carelessness? Another important factor is the availability of properly maintained grounds to play these games. What if the authorities had not anticipated this surge in the participants? This could have led to poor maintainence of the grounds making them more susceptible for injury causing accidents.
Another argument made by the author is derived from the recent interviews of the players. However, even though the interviews are taken only in the major cities, the assumption is made for the entire nation. It is highly possible that the parental and coach pressures are only found in the major cities and not throughout the nation. Also to confirm this notion, we need to first know about the number of children that were interviewed. What if only a handful of young atheletes talked about this psychological pressure?
In addition to these views, author is convinced about the point raised by educational experts regarding loss in the time for academic activities. However, to claim this, one should be first aware about the academic activities that are being held. Also, were these activities held even before these practice sessions hampered them? If yes, then what kind of participation was observed among the students? Since the author assumes that children did participate in these activities prior to alloting their time for practice sessions, the argument fails if the children were never showing enthusiam for the same. In that case, an introspection in needed for enhacing the appeal of the academic activities to ensure larger participation.
Due to these discrepancies, the author fails to convince me that atheletic activities are diadavantageous for the young children. On the other hand, the key factors responsible for the issues mentioned by him/her should be carefully looked into.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
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: 22 15
No. of Words: 392 350
No. of Characters: 1998 1500
No. of Different Words: 199 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.45 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.097 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.845 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 142 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 106 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 51 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.818 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 4.923 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.591 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.278 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.506 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.102 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 335, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Also,
...r cities and not throughout the nation. Also to confirm this notion, we need to firs...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, firstly, however, if, look, regarding, so, then, thus, in addition, kind of, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 4.0 12.9520958084 31% => OK
Conjunction : 3.0 11.1786427146 27% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2052.0 2260.96107784 91% => OK
No of words: 390.0 441.139720559 88% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.26153846154 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.44391917772 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.92451718903 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 203.0 204.123752495 99% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.520512820513 0.468620217663 111% => OK
syllable_count: 638.1 705.55239521 90% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 22.8473053892 74% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 30.3829892054 57.8364921388 53% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 93.2727272727 119.503703932 78% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.7272727273 23.324526521 76% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.86363636364 5.70786347227 85% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => 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: 0.137887683321 0.218282227539 63% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0389364674835 0.0743258471296 52% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.037628353299 0.0701772020484 54% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0776280617917 0.128457276422 60% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0366603469314 0.0628817314937 58% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.2 14.3799401198 85% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 54.22 48.3550499002 112% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.93 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.65 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 103.0 98.500998004 105% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.8 11.1389221557 79% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.