The following appeared in a letter from the faculty committee to the president of Seatown University:
A study conducted at nearby Oceania University showed that faculty retention is higher when professors are offered free tuition at the university for their own college-aged children. Therefore, Seatown should institute a free-tuition policy for its professors for the purpose of enhancing morale among the faculty and luring new professors.
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.
The author concludes here that, Seatown University should offer the professors free-tution for their child to achieve higher professor retention rate. Stated in this way, the argument fails to mention some key features, on the basis of which it could have been evaluated. To support his claim, the author reasons that, as Oceania University have higher professor retention rate when professors are offered free-tuition for their child, Seatown University should also follow that strategy to achieve similar professor retention rate. However, careful scrutiny of evidence will reveal little credible support for the author's claim that. Hence, the claim can be considered to be incomplete and unsustainable.
Firstly, the author readily assumes that, higher retention rate of Oceania University is due to the strategy of free-tuition. This is merely an assumption without much solid ground. To illustrate, there could be other factors like home facility, higher salary, job for wife etc all of which worked together for the institute in question. Hence, the argument would have been convincing if it explicitly stated that, there is no difference in other facilities for professors in Oceania and Seatown University.
Again, the author points out that, the tuition-free strategy will lure new professors. This is another weak and unsupported claim that does not demonstrate a clear correlation among, new professors with tuition-free facility. For example, new professor can be unmarried and can have plan of never having children. So, if the author proved with credible evidence that this facility can actually attract new professors , it could have been convincing for the reader.
Furthermore, the argument raises some skeptical questions. Are there other universities in which Oceania University's strategy worked? Are the other facilities provided in Oceania University? Are there more professor in Seatown Univeristy than in Oceaniua? Without answering these questions, the reader is left the impression that the argument is just wishful thinking of the author rather than substantive evidence.
Finally, the argument is unpersuasive as it stands. To bolster further, the auther must have provided some statistics or other means of evidence to reason his claim.
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: 20 15
No. of Words: 344 350
No. of Characters: 1873 1500
No. of Different Words: 170 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.307 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.445 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.754 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 149 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 117 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 56 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.2 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.75 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.45 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.319 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.532 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.064 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 285, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Use past participle here: 'planned'.
Suggestion: planned
...professor can be unmarried and can have plan of never having children. So, if the au...
^^^^
Line 9, column 418, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma, but not before the comma
Suggestion: ,
...lity can actually attract new professors , it could have been convincing for the ...
^^
Line 9, column 454, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...sors , it could have been convincing for the reader. Furthermore, the argume...
^^
Line 13, column 192, 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.
...ilities provided in Oceania University? Are there more professor in Seatown Univeri...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, finally, first, firstly, furthermore, hence, however, if, so, for example
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 34.0 55.5748502994 61% => OK
Nominalization: 22.0 16.3942115768 134% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1940.0 2260.96107784 86% => OK
No of words: 344.0 441.139720559 78% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.63953488372 5.12650576532 110% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.30665032142 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.83112000729 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 180.0 204.123752495 88% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.523255813953 0.468620217663 112% => OK
syllable_count: 603.0 705.55239521 85% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.59920159681 113% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 22.8473053892 74% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 51.4984465785 57.8364921388 89% => OK
Chars per sentence: 97.0 119.503703932 81% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.2 23.324526521 74% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.45 5.70786347227 78% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.235773762256 0.218282227539 108% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0774450942135 0.0743258471296 104% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0895437321924 0.0701772020484 128% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.128415602844 0.128457276422 100% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0834635218943 0.0628817314937 133% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.7 14.3799401198 95% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 37.3 48.3550499002 77% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.14 12.5979740519 120% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.66 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 91.0 98.500998004 92% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => 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: 54.17 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.25 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.