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.
While it may appear that the proposal put forward by the director of student housing at Buckingham College is really attractive and worth attention, the recommendation presented seems unlikely to have been backed by solid data and facts, thereby rendering the argument not cogent enough to consider.
First of all, the director claims that to serve the increasing housing needs of students, the college should build a number of new dormitaries. But he/she seems to have failed to take into account other factors that may affect this claim inadvertantly. Building new dormitaries require additional space, resources. Since nothing of the sort has been mentioned, it is likely that this important factor has been overlooked. Also, "a number of new dormitories" fails to specify exactly how many dormitaries should be built, if at all this proposal is accepted.
Secondly, albeit the current trends show that the enrollment at the college is growing, it is difficult to extrapolate the outcome over the nect 50 years. The claim that it would double in about 5 decades is a very bold claim and a little far-fetched too to invest in dormitaries currently. Various factors can affect this growing trend - the college may decide to discontinue some of the programs, or introduce new ones, new colleges might be introduced in the vicinity, the area's economic and social factors may change. All these can affect the enrollment adversely and therefore while the claim may hold true for the upcoming 5 years perhaps, it may not necessarily be the same for the next five decades.
Additionally, the director states that the average rent has risen in the recent years. Again there is a lack of factual data to indicate by what percentage the average rent has increased and whether or not this problem is worth looking into currently. The economic factors of the area in which the college is located may change drastically and it is difficult to predict if this trend of rise in rent will continue.
Finally, the enrollment of prospective students and building new dormitories may not be congruous. While it may be true that a student definitely looks into housing facilities before enrolling, it is not the single most important factor. There are other factors such as programs offered, faculty, job prospects, location etc that are far more likely to sway the students' decision to enroll at the college. Attractive new dormitories is surely not one of the driving factors.
In conclusion, the proposal has the potential to be approbated and favored by the college administration given that it is reviewed and backed by factual data instead of predicting the outcome based on trends. Currently the proposal is unlikely to gain approval as it is not persuasive enough.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 2.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 456 350
No. of Characters: 2251 1500
No. of Different Words: 224 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.621 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.936 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.7 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 171 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 134 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 54 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.684 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.632 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.308 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.576 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.048 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 378, Rule ID: SOME_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'some'.
Suggestion: some
...- the college may decide to discontinue some of the programs, or introduce new ones, new co...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 13, column 192, Rule ID: WHETHER[7]
Message: Perhaps you can shorten this phrase to just 'whether'. It is correct though if you mean 'regardless of whether'.
Suggestion: whether
...tage the average rent has increased and whether or not this problem is worth looking into curr...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, if, look, may, really, second, secondly, so, therefore, while, in conclusion, such as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 52.0 55.5748502994 94% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 16.3942115768 49% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2337.0 2260.96107784 103% => OK
No of words: 455.0 441.139720559 103% => OK
Chars per words: 5.13626373626 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.61852021839 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.83413437158 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 231.0 204.123752495 113% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.507692307692 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 729.0 705.55239521 103% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => 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: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 57.7251583438 57.8364921388 100% => OK
Chars per sentence: 123.0 119.503703932 103% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.9473684211 23.324526521 103% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.63157894737 5.70786347227 116% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More 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: 0.207955683075 0.218282227539 95% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0618517988638 0.0743258471296 83% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0743572024356 0.0701772020484 106% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.100954184544 0.128457276422 79% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0615325918638 0.0628817314937 98% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.8 14.3799401198 103% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.83 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.98 8.32208582834 108% => OK
difficult_words: 121.0 98.500998004 123% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.