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 author here claims that in order to meet the housing needs of the students at Buckingham College it is necessary to build new dormitories. The statement mentions the growing enrollment numbers and rent of the apartments in the city. While this is a clear indication that students might find it difficult to get houses in the city, it is too early to reach any conclusion. It is necessary to pay attention to a number of details regarding the student's needs before deciding in the favour of building new dormitories. A deeper understanding of the subject is required to evaluate the argument.
The argument has mentioned that the enrollment at Buckingham College is growing and based on the current trends, it will double over the next 50 years. But the statement fails to provide information about what proportion of the students register for the College's dormitories. It is possible that a very less number of students register for these services and the maximum of the student community prefers to stay in the apartments in the town. Since the argument mentions that the rent of the apartments in the town has been on a rise, it can be assumed that the dormitories offer a cheaper housing option. Even though the housing in the dorms is low and the number of people opting for these is low, the administration needs to pay attention to the low numbers and find out the reason. It is possible that the services provided at the dorms are of low quality and need immediate attention. Instead of building new dorms, the college then needs to improve the quality of existing dorms.
There is a high possibility that students prefer apartments over dormitories, the reason being the independence, privacy, and better living conditions that apartments offer. The student community should be included and a statistically variant analysis should be undertaken to look at the trends and needs. Strong evidence against this analysis will surely strengthen the argument of building new dormitories.
Another aspect that needs to be taken care of is how will the building of new dormitories affect the expenses and budget of the college. Does the college have enough funds to sanction this proposal? Will the dormitories lead to an increase in the fees or rent paid by the students? Are students ready to pay higher fees and rent for the new dorms? Answers to all these questions can surely make or break the argument.
Going by the numbers presented by the author about the enrollments at Buckingham College, it is obvious to think that the dormitories are an immediate requirement. But in order to further strengthen the argument, the author needs to provide additional details regarding the quality of services of dormitories in comparison to apartments, the proportion of students opting for dormitories, and the effect of building new dormitories on fees and rent.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.8 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 479 350
No. of Characters: 2348 1500
No. of Different Words: 188 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.678 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.902 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.776 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 174 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 139 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 101 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 60 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.773 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.179 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.273 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.323 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.509 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.075 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, if, look, regarding, so, then, while
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 75.0 55.5748502994 135% => OK
Nominalization: 22.0 16.3942115768 134% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2396.0 2260.96107784 106% => OK
No of words: 479.0 441.139720559 109% => OK
Chars per words: 5.00208768267 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.67825486995 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.84481371552 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 201.0 204.123752495 98% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.419624217119 0.468620217663 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 731.7 705.55239521 104% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
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: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 49.8666196174 57.8364921388 86% => OK
Chars per sentence: 108.909090909 119.503703932 91% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.7727272727 23.324526521 93% => OK
Discourse Markers: 1.86363636364 5.70786347227 33% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.364311141992 0.218282227539 167% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.104972603517 0.0743258471296 141% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0801481763131 0.0701772020484 114% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.211110993069 0.128457276422 164% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0830024765969 0.0628817314937 132% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.0 14.3799401198 90% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 48.3550499002 121% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.72 12.5979740519 93% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.74 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 93.0 98.500998004 94% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.