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 invol

Essay topics:

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 discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.

In the letter to the school board in the town of Centerville, the author recommends that an efficacious and mandatory program sponsored by the high school is the only remedy to the serious accident problem in Centerville. The author has reached to this recommendation after observing several accidents in and around Centerville in the last two years. However, before evaluating the argument, satisfactory answers must be provided to these following three questions.

First of all, is the number of accidents those involve teenage drivers are significant? The author, without any evidence, assumes that the number of accidents which involved teenage drivers is very high. However, this may not be the case. It is very possible that the number of accidents in the past two years grew only by a very little amount. The author has not provided any specific number of accidents or comparison of number of accidents of the past two years with the previous record of accidents involved with teenager drivers. It is very possible that the number of accidents in the past was only 2 and in the last two years it rose to only 5. If this is the case, then the argument will be seriously flawed.

Secondly, is the number of parents in Centerville, who claimed to be too busy to teach their teenagers to drive, a considerable number? The author prematurely assumes that many of the parents have provided such complain. In reality, this may not be the case. It is quite possible that most of the parents are very anxious about their teenagers’ safety and they put enough time to teach their students to drive. They teach their teenagers to drive safely and very cautiously and to abide by the traffic rules properly. The teenager drivers get enough amount of training for safe driving from their parents. If this case has merit, then the argument will not hold water.

Last, but not least, don’t the two driving schools in Centerville provide some discount for the parents who are on a tight budget and can’t afford to pay for driving instruction? The author, without providing any evidence, assumes that these two driving schools are very ravenous and only focuses on making profit by charging a huge amount of money for everyone irrespective of the financial conditions of the parents. However, this may not come out as true. It is quite likely that these two driving schools provide enough amounts of discounts in their safe driving courses to the parents who are not financially so strong. They only take a nominal amount of money from them and provide their teenagers a good training. The author did not provide any evidence for this and so the argument is seriously weakened.

In conclusion, the argument, as it stands, is seriously flawed as it relies on unwarranted assumptions which may turn out to be invalid in further investigation. If the author is able to provide satisfactory answers to the above stated three questions and provide necessary evidence for supporting these answers, then the argument can be considered properly for evaluation. Otherwise, the argument will remain severely flawed as it remains on surface.

Votes
Average: 7.2 (4 votes)
Essay Categories

Comments

Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, in conclusion, first of all

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 39.0 28.8173652695 135% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 76.0 55.5748502994 137% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2617.0 2260.96107784 116% => OK
No of words: 524.0 441.139720559 119% => OK
Chars per words: 4.99427480916 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.7844588288 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.69653382153 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 222.0 204.123752495 109% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.423664122137 0.468620217663 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 818.1 705.55239521 116% => 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: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 26.0 19.7664670659 132% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 55.7965582913 57.8364921388 96% => OK
Chars per sentence: 100.653846154 119.503703932 84% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.1538461538 23.324526521 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.26923076923 5.70786347227 57% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => OK
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: 0.193642081238 0.218282227539 89% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0550680327873 0.0743258471296 74% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0518768298664 0.0701772020484 74% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.115031134972 0.128457276422 90% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.085103180055 0.0628817314937 135% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.1 14.3799401198 84% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.66 12.5979740519 93% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.67 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 101.0 98.500998004 103% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?

---------------------

Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.

Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 26 15
No. of Words: 525 350
No. of Characters: 2543 1500
No. of Different Words: 206 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.787 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.844 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.596 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 194 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 147 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 90 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 53 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.192 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.867 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.306 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.506 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.089 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5