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 a memo, the director of student housing of Buckingham College concludes that due to increase in student enrollment at Buckingham College the Buckingham College should build new dormitories for the prospective students. The author come to this contention based on the current trends of increasing enrollment, increasing pricing of housing in town and hoping that the newly built dormitories will attract for students in coming years. While this might be true, the author needs to provide three pieces of additional evidence in order to bolster the assertion’s credibility.
First of all, the author assumes that the current trends is reliable and are accurate enough over 50 years. However, this might not be valid. For instance, it might be possible that the current increase in enrollment is due to this being only college in the town. But it might be the case that new college is built in the town which can lead to decrease in the enrollment of new students in Buckingham College. In addition, this increase in current trend might be due to other colleges decreased the enrolment due to shortage of available seats in the college. If the aforementioned cases turn out to be true, then the author’s evaluation is considerably hampered.
Secondly, the author assumes that the average for an apartment will be rising even further in years to come. The director predicted this on the basis of recent increase in price of housing in the town. However, this might not hold water. For example, it might be possible that the recent increase in price is due to recent increase in jobs in the town and thus, over years the number of available jobs might decrease leading to decrease in pricing of housing. In addition, it is possible that the students can afford this high pricing of housing. If either of this scenario holds true, then the author’s contention will be weakened.
Finally, the author assumes that the new dormitories will more likely attract new prospective students to the Buckingham College. Perhaps the prospective students prefer to live outside the College irrespective of price of housing in the town. In addition, almost all students have priority in terms of College academics, sports, and cultures. They may not care about whether the dormitories are new or old. Thus, if that proves to be the case, then author’s argument is not overly compelling.
To conclude, the author maybe correct about predicting the number of students enrolling in future based on current trends and building new dormitories to attract the students. However, as it stands now, the prediction rests on the above three assumptions that dramatically hinder its validity. If the author would like to increase its persuasiveness of his conclusion, he needs to answer the three questions above.
Comments
e-rater score 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: 23 15
No. of Words: 460 350
No. of Characters: 2275 1500
No. of Different Words: 183 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.631 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.946 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.667 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 170 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 137 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 91 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 45 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.113 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.783 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.322 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.503 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.081 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, however, if, may, second, secondly, then, thus, while, for example, for instance, in addition, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 30.0 28.8173652695 104% => OK
Preposition: 77.0 55.5748502994 139% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2348.0 2260.96107784 104% => OK
No of words: 460.0 441.139720559 104% => OK
Chars per words: 5.10434782609 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.6311565067 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.76784466385 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 186.0 204.123752495 91% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.404347826087 0.468620217663 86% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 711.0 705.55239521 101% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 49.9002786283 57.8364921388 86% => OK
Chars per sentence: 102.086956522 119.503703932 85% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.0 23.324526521 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.5652173913 5.70786347227 98% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.292081055609 0.218282227539 134% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0922345608216 0.0743258471296 124% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.134879942751 0.0701772020484 192% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.199454981583 0.128457276422 155% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.135297439435 0.0628817314937 215% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.6 14.3799401198 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 59.64 48.3550499002 123% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.3 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.65 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 88.0 98.500998004 89% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.