The following appeared in a memo from the director of student housing at Buckingham College.
"To serve the housing needs of our students, Buckingham College should build a number of new dormitories. Buckingham's enrollment is growing and, based on current trends, will double over the next 50 years, thus making existing dormitory space inadequate. Moreover, the average rent for an apartment in our town has risen in recent years. Consequently, students will find it increasingly difficult to afford off-campus housing. Finally, attractive new dormitories would make prospective students more likely to enroll at Buckingham."
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.
It is understandable that the director of student housing wants to build newer dormitories seeing the growing enrollment trend and unaffordability of off-campus housing. His solution of the problem, although reasonable, is still based on unwarranted assumptions that make his argument faulty.
Firstly, the director assumes that just because the enrollment is increasing in recent years, it will continue to be so for many years to come. A trend is never fully dependable. It can shift immediately the following year too, and if this happens, the new dormitories will just be a waste of money.
Secondly, he says that the rent in the off-campus housing is rising continuously. It may be true but he hasn't checked on the financial status of the enrolling students to ensure that they will not be able to afford it. The amount or percentage of increase is also not mentioned, which could ultimately be a meagre amount. The steep pricing may also have affected campus housing and the hostel fees could also have raised commensurately to that of off-campus housing, which he has not mentioned.
Thirdly, he believes "attractive" dormitories would pique the interest of prospective students, but it is not just based on dormitories that students base their college choice. In the contrast, it might just be the least of the student's worries.
Finally, the director has failed to survey the area nearby his college to see if any new houses or even new colleges are being built. If it is so, then the newer buildings may take away the prospective students who the directors expect to occupy his newly constructed hostels.
Rife with numerous assumptions, the memo presented by the director is inadequate to verify the need for new housing in the college. Perhaps, a wiser move would be to present more data on the enrollment trends, students background, their inclination, off-campus housing, etc to make his argument more credulous.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- not OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
argument 4 -- OK
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flaws:
No. of Words: 318 350
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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: 15 15
No. of Words: 318 350
No. of Characters: 1569 1500
No. of Different Words: 172 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.223 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.934 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.83 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 110 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 88 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 63 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.2 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.263 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.319 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.635 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.083 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 105, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: hasn't
...ing continuously. It may be true but he hasnt checked on the financial status of the ...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, firstly, if, may, second, secondly, so, still, then, third, thirdly
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 : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 35.0 55.5748502994 63% => OK
Nominalization: 7.0 16.3942115768 43% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1635.0 2260.96107784 72% => OK
No of words: 317.0 441.139720559 72% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.15772870662 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.21953715646 4.56307096286 92% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.06046370957 2.78398813304 110% => OK
Unique words: 174.0 204.123752495 85% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.548895899054 0.468620217663 117% => OK
syllable_count: 496.8 705.55239521 70% => 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: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
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: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 41.1666531714 57.8364921388 71% => OK
Chars per sentence: 109.0 119.503703932 91% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.1333333333 23.324526521 91% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.26666666667 5.70786347227 110% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => 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: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.199809209801 0.218282227539 92% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0667785937592 0.0743258471296 90% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0598956438493 0.0701772020484 85% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.108086206665 0.128457276422 84% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0417896262235 0.0628817314937 66% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.4 14.3799401198 93% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.65 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.86 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 84.0 98.500998004 85% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => 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.