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.
The director of student housing states that Buckingham College should build more dormitories corresponding to the growing student population. However, the author should provide some information in order to substantiate the claim.
The memo mentions that the enrollments will double after 50 years based on the current growing rate. Nevertheless, the author doesn't provide any evidence about how long the current trends will last for. If the cause of increasing students is the rising birth rate after the war, then it is reasonable that the trends will not last for 50 years. Therefore, the prediction that the enrollments will double could be an overestimation.
Even if the enrollments will double, there is no information about the current dormitory usage. If the dormitories are already full of students, then the call for new ones is quite conceivable. However, if there are still a lot of empty rooms right now, those dormitories could have the ability to handle the increasing students. As a result, the demand of new dormitories is not quite urgent.
The author also says that the average rent for an apartment in town has risen, and thus, claims that students won't have the ability to afford it. Still, the evidence between the reason and his claim is not provided. It is possible that the rising rent is due to the inflation. Since inflation is caused by people's increasing purchase power, it will not actually make students more difficult to afford the rent for an apartment. Even if the rising rent corresponds to an increasing demand, that doesn't mean that students of Buckingham College will not be able to afford it. If the students mainly come from high class families, it is not a big deal to pay for the apartment no matter how high the rent is. Therefore, the author should also provide the students' background in order to make the claim.
The author suggests that by building some attractive new dormitories, students are more likely to enroll to this school. There is no any evidence showing that students choose their schools based on whether the school has fancy dormitories. If a reliable survey confirms that students in fact take the dormitories into their consideration when deciding where to study, the claim can be reasonable. Yet, if students only take the school's reputation into account, then building new dormitories would not help increase the enrollments.
To justify his argument, I think the author should provide evidence as above mentioned.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 413 350
No. of Characters: 2027 1500
No. of Different Words: 183 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.508 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.908 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.663 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 141 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 103 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 77 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 44 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.773 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.376 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.773 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.314 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.314 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.087 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 126, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
... growing rate. Nevertheless, the author doesnt provide any evidence about how long the...
^^^^^^
Line 4, column 494, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...rresponds to an increasing demand, that doesnt mean that students of Buckingham Colleg...
^^^^^^
Line 5, column 130, Rule ID: NOW[2]
Message: Did you mean 'now' (=at this moment) instead of 'no' (negation)?
Suggestion: now
...kely to enroll to this school. There is no any evidence showing that students choo...
^^
Line 5, column 428, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'schools'' or 'school's'?
Suggestion: schools'; school's
...sonable. Yet, if students only take the schools reputation into account, then building ...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, however, if, nevertheless, so, still, then, therefore, thus, i think, in fact, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 2.0 11.1786427146 18% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 38.0 55.5748502994 68% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2077.0 2260.96107784 92% => OK
No of words: 410.0 441.139720559 93% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.06585365854 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.49982852243 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.74281821397 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 193.0 204.123752495 95% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.470731707317 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 628.2 705.55239521 89% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 10.0 2.70958083832 369% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 29.1262924021 57.8364921388 50% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 94.4090909091 119.503703932 79% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.6363636364 23.324526521 80% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.81818181818 5.70786347227 84% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => 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: 0.266548925503 0.218282227539 122% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0790558154594 0.0743258471296 106% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0988724070364 0.0701772020484 141% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.142113846214 0.128457276422 111% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.109895295132 0.0628817314937 175% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.8 14.3799401198 82% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 61.67 48.3550499002 128% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.1 12.197005988 75% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.13 12.5979740519 96% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.49 8.32208582834 90% => OK
difficult_words: 77.0 98.500998004 78% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.