The following appeared in a magazine article about planning for retirement.
"Clearview should be a top choice for anyone seeking a place to retire, because it has spectacular natural beauty and a consistent climate. Another advantage is that housing costs in Clearview have fallen significantly during the past year, and taxes remain lower than those in neighboring towns. Moreover, Clearview's mayor promises many new programs to improve schools, streets, and public services. And best of all, retirees in Clearview can also expect excellent health care as they grow older, since the number of physicians in the area is far greater than the national average."
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 of the magazine article claims that after retirement, people should choose Clearview because of several benefits, including low housing costs, less taxation, and healthcare facilities. However, while drawing the conclusion from the "benefits" the author made three unwarranted assumptions that, if true weakens the author's claim of choosing Clearview as people's retirement destination.
First of all, the main reason that the author provides for selecting Clearview is that healthcare is expected to be excellent as the number of physicians in the area is more than the national average. The author makes an assumption that it is only the number of doctors in a certain are that determines the quality of healthcare. However, along with quantity, the quality of the doctors is a greater factor that influences healthcare conditions. It is possible that even though there are a lot of physicians in Clearview, they are inexperienced and wanting enough skills. Furthermore, the author concentrates only on the number of physicians, rather than all of the healthcare department. People planning their retirement would be more attracted to a place where there is a good mixture of all kinds of doctors. If the author fails to provide evidence for the better "quality" of doctors, the assumption that Clearview is expected to have better health care holds no water.
Secondly, the author uses the recent decline in housing costs, and lower taxes as factors to attract people to Clearview. The author provides no further explanation about the reason for those lower costs. Since the housing cost declined significantly from last year, there could be adverse reasons for the same. People who are already living in Clearview might have started facing several issues with regular facilities like fresh drinking water or poor food quality and have started to leave Clearview. This would explain the sudden decline in housing costs. If the author can provide evidence to support that there were no adverse reasons for lowered housing costs, his claim of selecting Clearview will be bolstered.
Finally, the author wants to convince people to choose Clearview based on the mayor's promises to enhance education, streets, and other public services. There is no support that can state that the promises will be kept. There is a possibility that there is an upcoming election due to which the mayor is making false promises. Moreover, the author does not mention any timeline for these developments to occur. Even if these enhancements are going to happen, which in itself is uncertain, there is no guarantee that it would happen in recent times. It could take several years leaving people without basic services.
In conclusion, the author's claim for choosing Clearview as a retirement destination could be true, but there are several unstated assumptions that the author makes in order to reach that conclusion. If the author fails to provide evidence to support them, his claim remains flawed.
Comments
e-rater score 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: 23 15
No. of Words: 479 350
No. of Characters: 2460 1500
No. of Different Words: 219 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.678 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.136 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.602 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 195 100
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: 56 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.826 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.913 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.522 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.322 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.521 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.093 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 657, Rule ID: ALL_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'all the'.
Suggestion: all the
...n the number of physicians, rather than all of the healthcare department. People planning ...
^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, furthermore, however, if, may, moreover, second, secondly, so, while, in conclusion, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 20.0 13.6137724551 147% => OK
Pronoun: 30.0 28.8173652695 104% => OK
Preposition: 53.0 55.5748502994 95% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2551.0 2260.96107784 113% => OK
No of words: 479.0 441.139720559 109% => OK
Chars per words: 5.32567849687 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.67825486995 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.84333949397 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 232.0 204.123752495 114% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.484342379958 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 773.1 705.55239521 110% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.2798261258 57.8364921388 80% => OK
Chars per sentence: 110.913043478 119.503703932 93% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.8260869565 23.324526521 89% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.13043478261 5.70786347227 90% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 14.0 8.20758483034 171% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.17190544002 0.218282227539 79% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0518753285293 0.0743258471296 70% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0480983337702 0.0701772020484 69% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.100410058736 0.128457276422 78% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0339252151785 0.0628817314937 54% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.1 14.3799401198 98% => OK
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: 13.63 12.5979740519 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.16 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 107.0 98.500998004 109% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.