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 be true that to incorporate the needs of students, new dormitories are needed, but the author's argument doesn't make a cogent case for the construction of new dorms. The argument is rife with statemants lacking evidence in support of them.
The author states that the enrollment in Bukhingam College has been increasing lately, but doesn't mention the rate of growth and data that would support such a claim. Even if the data is readily available, there has to be a limit on how much enrollment per year increases, and it can even decrease. The statement in which author vaguely points according to current trends to the number 50 which the author claims to be the number of years it will take to make the existing space inadequate. 50 years is a big number and is certainly too long for the enrollment growth numbers to hold reliably.
While the claim that house rents are on a rise, there still needs to be the evidence on how much the rent rises and does it exceed the nominal earning capabilities of the average household or is the rise synchronous with the inflation.
Even students need to be taken into consideration be it is after for them the dormitories are going to be constructed, some students may purposely choose to live off campus, some may live so close by that they choose to be day scholars, hence throwing the demand of dorms into confusion. Does the college have left over land space where it is going to construct dormitories or will they be located off campus themselves, which requires numbers which will tell if this is a viable idea.
In addition the college trustees, faculty, and students when asked may disagree to building dormitories only on the basis of a claim that after a long time they may be needed, and rather they could want an improvement of existing infrastructure, which may have a larger impact on attracting students.
In conclusion, there needs to be a deeper and better analysis of the current scenario and proper estimation of the future with some ballpark figures along with empirical evidence. The college may decide to build the dormitories anyway but as of now the author's argument doesn't provide proper evidence for that to be warranted.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
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: 12 15
No. of Words: 385 350
No. of Characters: 1789 1500
No. of Different Words: 186 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.43 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.647 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.586 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 118 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 85 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 64 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 36 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 32.083 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.146 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.359 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.709 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.095 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 101, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...ts, new dormitories are needed, but the authors argument doesnt make a cogent case for ...
^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 118, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...es are needed, but the authors argument doesnt make a cogent case for the construction...
^^^^^^
Line 3, column 92, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...College has been increasing lately, but doesnt mention the rate of growth and data tha...
^^^^^^
Line 9, column 4, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[2]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: addition,
...ll tell if this is a viable idea. In addition the college trustees, faculty, and stud...
^^^^^^^^
Line 11, column 254, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...he dormitories anyway but as of now the authors argument doesnt provide proper evidence...
^^^^^^^
Line 11, column 271, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...yway but as of now the authors argument doesnt provide proper evidence for that to be ...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
anyway, but, hence, if, may, so, still, while, as to, in addition, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 21.0 28.8173652695 73% => OK
Preposition: 51.0 55.5748502994 92% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1829.0 2260.96107784 81% => OK
No of words: 382.0 441.139720559 87% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.78795811518 5.12650576532 93% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.42095241839 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.66736842369 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 188.0 204.123752495 92% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.492146596859 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 570.6 705.55239521 81% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 0.0 4.96107784431 0% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 12.0 19.7664670659 61% => 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: 31.0 22.8473053892 136% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 64.8922183316 57.8364921388 112% => OK
Chars per sentence: 152.416666667 119.503703932 128% => OK
Words per sentence: 31.8333333333 23.324526521 136% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.66666666667 5.70786347227 117% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 6.0 5.25449101796 114% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => 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: 0.0941904902807 0.218282227539 43% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0385940567576 0.0743258471296 52% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0206625449784 0.0701772020484 29% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0513464552452 0.128457276422 40% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0105052503396 0.0628817314937 17% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.0 14.3799401198 118% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.47 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.2 12.197005988 116% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.09 12.5979740519 88% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.65 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 84.0 98.500998004 85% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.4 11.1389221557 129% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
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.