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.
In this memo, the director argues that Buckingham College needs to build a number of new dormitories to serve the housing needs of the college’s students. The argument seems valid at first, but the lack of pieces of evidence leads me to question the validity of the argument.
First, the director needs to provide concrete evidence on the increasing trend of the student number. The increasing trend of the present may be an aberration. The director should give the data of at least the past five years to demonstrate the increasing trend. Even if the increasing trend is true, 50 years is so substantial number that it cannot be used as the reference data for the reason why Buckingham College should build a number of new dormitories. The director should argue based on the number of students in the near future, three years for example.
Second, the director needs to add solid evidence about the rental fee of the off-campus housing tendency. The rising of the average rent for an apartment did not indicate the rising of the rent for the whole available apartment. It is possible that the new and expensive apartment has been built recently, which leads the increase of the average rental fee. Also, it is likely the rising of the rent is temporary. This rising of the rent may be due to the transient increase in the economic condition of the nearby neighborhood, which will fall down in future. The director should provide more detail about the rent tendency for at least five years.
Lastly, more adamant pieces of evidence about the consequence of the new building of the dormitory should be provided. There is no logical connection between the new dormitory and the lure of the prospective students. The prospective students that Buckingham College wants might be attracted by other conditions such as the prominent professors, abundant scholarship programs, and the beautiful college building, not by the new dormitory. In addition, it costs a significant amount of money to build a number of new dormitories. Buckingham College can use that budget to the other infrastructure, instead of the new dormitory.
In summary, the director of student housing’s argument is not credible in many aspects. Therefore, the director needs to provide more concrete pieces of evidence about the trend of the student number, the rent of the nearby apartment, and the validity of the new dormitory as the method to attract the prospective students. With these pieces of evidence, the built of the new dormitory should be reconsidered.
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: 21 15
No. of Words: 422 350
No. of Characters: 2063 1500
No. of Different Words: 167 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.532 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.889 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.667 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 152 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 115 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 91 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.095 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.432 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.714 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.376 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.58 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.147 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 551, Rule ID: IN_PAST[1]
Message: Did you mean: 'in the future'?
Suggestion: in the future
...arby neighborhood, which will fall down in future. The director should provide more detai...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, if, lastly, may, second, so, therefore, at least, for example, in addition, in summary, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 13.0 28.8173652695 45% => OK
Preposition: 66.0 55.5748502994 119% => OK
Nominalization: 20.0 16.3942115768 122% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2129.0 2260.96107784 94% => OK
No of words: 422.0 441.139720559 96% => OK
Chars per words: 5.04502369668 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.53239876712 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.83677695981 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 176.0 204.123752495 86% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.417061611374 0.468620217663 89% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 660.6 705.55239521 94% => 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: 14.0 8.76447105788 160% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.6516010667 57.8364921388 81% => OK
Chars per sentence: 101.380952381 119.503703932 85% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.0952380952 23.324526521 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.38095238095 5.70786347227 94% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.308416733583 0.218282227539 141% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0972143800976 0.0743258471296 131% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0950043683709 0.0701772020484 135% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.192098930277 0.128457276422 150% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.080295849591 0.0628817314937 128% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.4 14.3799401198 86% => 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: 12.01 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.77 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 84.0 98.500998004 85% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.