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 schools 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.
In this letter, the author recommends that Centerville High School should require its students to take the driver’s education course at the high school. To support this recommendation, the author points out that in the past two years, several accidents involved in teenage drivers happened in and around Centerville. The author also points out that a number of parents in Centerville complained since they are too busy to teach their children to drive, and that because of tight budget of them, it is hard for them to pay for extant two driving schools. However, this line of reasoning is problematic in several respects.
To begin with, the argument relies on the assumption that all teenage drivers engaged in all accidents happened in and around Centerville and they caused accidents. Yet the letter provides no substantiating evidence for this assumption. Perhaps, they are living nearby town so that efforts to reduce accidents by mandatory driver education would be futile. Or, it is entirely possible that, although they all are living in Centerville, they were victims of accident, not cause of these accidents. Thus, lacking reliable evidence of the assumption I suggest above, it is difficult to accept the recommendation that mandatory driver education at Centerville High School is necessary.
Also, the mere fact that a lot of parents complained that because of their lack of time they cannot teach their teenagers does not the key in determining whether all student should be required to take driver education course. The author assumes that this indicates reality that most of their children had not taken any driver education course. However, the letter provides no evidence about whether their students have never taken the course or not. Lacking such evidence, it is entirely possible that almost all student took driver course, only a few students did not and only parents of those students complained. Without considering and ruling out such a possibility, the author cannot justify the recommendation.
Finally, the author appeals to the fact that parents on tight budget cannot afford for paying for other two driving schools. The author here assumes that costs of the recommendation would not increase tuition fee of the high school. But the author ignores other possibilities. In fact, it is entirely possible that by introducing mandatory driving course at Centerville High School, costs used for building tracks, hiring new lecturers, and buying additional textbooks would necessitate additional tuition fee increment and that if this additional cost is far more expensive than prices of the extant driver schools, then those parents would object the recommendation. Without ruling out all these and other possible negative consequences, the author fails to convince me that driver education course should be taught to all the student at Centerville High School.
In sum, the argument is unpersuasive as it stands. To strengthen the argument, the author must account for all the assumption with convincing evidence that most of teens involved in accidents for past two years are living Centerville and they caused the accidents and that most of the students have never taken driver’s education. To better evaluate the argument, I would need also to know how much additional tuition increase be predicted relative to the costs of extant driving schools.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 538 350
No. of Characters: 2786 1500
No. of Different Words: 213 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.816 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.178 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.7 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 230 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 158 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 108 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 65 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.455 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.576 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.325 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.524 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.081 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 157, Rule ID: MOST_SOME_OF_NNS[1]
Message: After 'most of', you should use 'the' ('most of the teens') or simply say ''most teens''.
Suggestion: most of the teens; most teens
...ssumption with convincing evidence that most of teens involved in accidents for past two year...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, however, if, so, then, thus, in fact, to begin with
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 : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 20.0 13.6137724551 147% => OK
Pronoun: 54.0 28.8173652695 187% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 71.0 55.5748502994 128% => OK
Nominalization: 29.0 16.3942115768 177% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2865.0 2260.96107784 127% => OK
No of words: 538.0 441.139720559 122% => OK
Chars per words: 5.32527881041 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.81610080973 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.82421289323 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 229.0 204.123752495 112% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.425650557621 0.468620217663 91% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 869.4 705.55239521 123% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 9.0 4.22255489022 213% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 78.7823788873 57.8364921388 136% => OK
Chars per sentence: 130.227272727 119.503703932 109% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.4545454545 23.324526521 105% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.22727272727 5.70786347227 57% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 14.0 6.88822355289 203% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.345962927204 0.218282227539 158% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.102575834473 0.0743258471296 138% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.114369207271 0.0701772020484 163% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.203535795274 0.128457276422 158% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0814504778343 0.0628817314937 130% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.9 14.3799401198 111% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.93 12.5979740519 111% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.67 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 97.0 98.500998004 98% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.