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 the student housing at Buckingham College claims that new dormitories should be built inside the college campus. The director arrives at this claim due to several evidences; Buckingham's enrollment is growing and will double in next 50 years; the average rent for an apartment has increased off-campus and making it difficult to afford. However, to make the author's argument more tenable, several other evidences should be taken into account.
Firstly, the director claims that the enrollment will double in next 50 years and current dormitory space will be insufficient to accommodate students. Here, the director missed to give complete information of students, whether majority of the students are from Buckingham city or outside city. For instance, there's a capacity of 1000 students to be accommodated in dormitories at Buckingham College. Also, majority of the students are from Buckingham city, and when audited, more than 700 dormitory beds are vacant. So, even if enrollments double in next 50 years, the director's claim for need of new dormitory does not hold water, as the current capacity is adequate for future needs.
Secondly, the director points out that the average rent of the apartment in Buckingham has risen in recent years which may stymie the admissions at Buckingham College. It may happen that majority of the students at college, are enrolled in programs that do not require the students to come to college daily. Also, Buckingham is well connected to nearby town, where the average apartment rent is low, and the travel time to college is also low. So students may find accommodation outside the town which are even more cheaper than Buckingham College's dormitory. Thus, majority of the students might be living off-campus and discarding the need for construction of new dormitories.
Finally, the director claims that better dormitories will attract new students and not better education. Although, better infrastructure is an added advantage for the college to attract more students but it is not the sole reason. Students, who are taking admission to Buckingham College could be due to its famous technological course, which is being offered by a professor. Now after 50 years if the technology changes, the course has to replace by felicitous course. Also, the professor will retire after 50 years and has to be replaced by another professor, who can captivate students. If any of this does not happen then, the prescience of enrollment getting double will be fallacious.
To recapitulate, the director of student housing at Buckingham College presents an interesting but a flawed argument and has failed to consider specific evidences for his claims. Had he provided more evidences as mentioned above, his argument would have been persuasive. As it remains, the director's argument is too weak to be true. Hence, I remain unconvinced.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 6 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 462 350
No. of Characters: 2366 1500
No. of Different Words: 209 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.636 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.121 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.797 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 188 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 150 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 107 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 64 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.087 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.494 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.739 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.324 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.525 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.093 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 374, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...fficult to afford. However, to make the authors argument more tenable, several other ev...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 310, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: there's
...ham city or outside city. For instance, theres a capacity of 1000 students to be accom...
^^^^^^
Line 5, column 512, Rule ID: MOST_COMPARATIVE[2]
Message: Use only 'cheaper' (without 'more') when you use the comparative.
Suggestion: cheaper
...odation outside the town which are even more cheaper than Buckingham Colleges dormitory. Thu...
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 291, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'directors'' or 'director's'?
Suggestion: directors'; director's
...ave been persuasive. As it remains, the directors argument is too weak to be true. Hence,...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, firstly, hence, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, thus, well, as to, for instance
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 17.0 28.8173652695 59% => OK
Preposition: 59.0 55.5748502994 106% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2433.0 2260.96107784 108% => OK
No of words: 462.0 441.139720559 105% => OK
Chars per words: 5.26623376623 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.63618218583 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.85703217023 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 220.0 204.123752495 108% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.47619047619 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 757.8 705.55239521 107% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 39.212811841 57.8364921388 68% => OK
Chars per sentence: 105.782608696 119.503703932 89% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.0869565217 23.324526521 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.21739130435 5.70786347227 91% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => 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 : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 11.0 4.67664670659 235% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.377645180178 0.218282227539 173% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.118041237515 0.0743258471296 159% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.104260905532 0.0701772020484 149% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.228335175501 0.128457276422 178% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0709630385723 0.0628817314937 113% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.4 14.3799401198 93% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.29 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.25 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 106.0 98.500998004 108% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.