The following appeared in a letter to the school board in the town of Centerville.
“All students should be required to take the driver’s education course at Centerville High School. In the past two years, several accidents in and around Centerville have involved teenage drivers. Since a number of parents in Centerville have complained that they are too busy to teach their teenagers to drive, some other instruction is necessary to ensure that these teenagers are safe drivers. Although there are two driving school in Centerville, parents on a tight budget cannot afford to pay for driving instruction. Therefore an effective and mandatory program sponsored by the high school is the only solution to this serious problem.”
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 letter tries to justify the reason of establishment of mandatory driving program in Centerville High School. The author claims that this action is taken due to the increased amount of traffic accidents in the area by teenage drivers. Although this argument may seem plausible at first, the assumptions lead readers to doubt the validity of the argument.
First, the argument relies on unproven cause and effect relationship between the occurrence of accidents and lack of instruction. The author mentions that the accidents by teenage drivers raised in the past two years. By this statement, we can infer that there were no or less traffic accidents induced by teenagers even though there weren’t instructing program provided at the moment. Thus, the linkage between the accident and education is unclear.
Second, although the accidents happened in the area were involving teenagers, it doesn’t mean that the subjects are the students of Centerville High School. The drivers could be teenagers who have already graduated or the students from another high schools or other areas. Furthermore, even if there were few Centerville High School students involved in the accidents, the program doesn’t have to be mandatory to all students.
Finally, the author states that this program is the only solution to augmenting accidents, but none of the probable alternatives are compared in the letter. The effectiveness of other options such as traffic CCTVs to monitor the roads or frequency increase of police patrol also need to be compared to fully support the argument.
In conclusion, to better bolster the argument, more valid evidences have to be corroborated in the letter. The effect of education program on mitigating the number of accidents and the subjects of the accidents should be clarified. Also, adequate alternatives to attest the effectiveness of the program also need to be provided.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 305 350
No. of Characters: 1562 1500
No. of Different Words: 152 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.179 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.121 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.781 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 126 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 99 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 69 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 42 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.333 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.121 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.35 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.604 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.078 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 268, Rule ID: NOW[2]
Message: Did you mean 'now' (=at this moment) instead of 'no' (negation)?
Suggestion: now
...statement, we can infer that there were no or less traffic accidents induced by te...
^^
Line 5, column 54, Rule ID: PROGRESSIVE_VERBS[1]
Message: This verb is normally not used in the progressive form. Try a simple form instead.
...ough the accidents happened in the area were involving teenagers, it doesn’t mean that the sub...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, furthermore, if, may, second, so, thus, in conclusion, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 12.9520958084 46% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 11.0 28.8173652695 38% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1615.0 2260.96107784 71% => OK
No of words: 302.0 441.139720559 68% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.34768211921 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.1687104957 4.56307096286 91% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.87070815454 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 154.0 204.123752495 75% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.509933774834 0.468620217663 109% => OK
syllable_count: 490.5 705.55239521 70% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 30.3061416585 57.8364921388 52% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 107.666666667 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.1333333333 23.324526521 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.93333333333 5.70786347227 104% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => 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: 0.282283129824 0.218282227539 129% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0978807909896 0.0743258471296 132% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0818975515255 0.0701772020484 117% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.144848031428 0.128457276422 113% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0972470217032 0.0628817314937 155% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.8 14.3799401198 96% => OK
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: 13.75 12.5979740519 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.81 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 80.0 98.500998004 81% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 62.5 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.75 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.