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.
According to the memo by the director of student housing at Buckingham College, the college authority should construct new housing residences. The claim is based on the growing enrollment of college students, higher apartment rent and a point of attraction for the future students to admit at Buckingham. However, before accepting the claim, three specific evidences need to be assessed to justify the validation of establishing new dormitories.
First of all, specific evidence regarding the current capacity of the existing dormitories is required. It may be possible that the dormitories are established recently to accommodate the future prospective students keeping in mind the rising enrollment at the Buckingham college. Therefore, without sufficient information about the housing capacity, it seems logically unsound to consider the existing space insufficient.
Secondly, supporting evidence on the average fare for the student apartment in the nearby area is needed to justify the claim. It may be possible that the rent is higher for large apartments which are basically chosen by the high-income people. On the contrary, due to the growing demand of the student housing, the mean rent of the student housing is relatively lower. Without the exact information about the rents of the student houses, it can't be censused that students have to rely on dormitories due to the high rent of the nearby off-campus apartments.
Finally, a survey from the existing students about the placement of new dormitories is required to assess the generalization of the aforementioned claim. It may be possible that students might not like the construction works of the new dormitories during their class and exam time. In the worst-case scenario, many of them might decide to leave the campus because of the unwanted pollutions caused by the construction works. The lack of student survey regarding the construction work seriously undermines the claim of the director of student housing.
Because of the lack of above-mentioned evidences, the argument of the passage is reasonably flawed and if one or more of the previously mentioned points become true, the argument as a whole will collapse. Therefore, the director of student housing needs to recheck the points and confirm accordingly to consider his viewpoint.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 2 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 7 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 361 350
No. of Characters: 1915 1500
No. of Different Words: 171 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.359 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.305 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.976 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 155 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 129 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 93 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 58 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.562 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 4.886 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.362 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.604 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.108 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 443, Rule ID: CANT[1]
Message: Did you mean 'can't' or 'cannot'?
Suggestion: can't; cannot
...out the rents of the student houses, it cant be censused that students have to rely ...
^^^^
Line 5, column 443, Rule ID: IT_VBZ[1]
Message: Did you mean 'cants'?
Suggestion: cants
...out the rents of the student houses, it cant be censused that students have to rely ...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
accordingly, finally, first, however, if, may, regarding, second, secondly, so, therefore, first of all, on the contrary
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 5.0 13.6137724551 37% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 12.0 28.8173652695 42% => OK
Preposition: 63.0 55.5748502994 113% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1963.0 2260.96107784 87% => OK
No of words: 361.0 441.139720559 82% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.43767313019 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.35889894354 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.04977469364 2.78398813304 110% => OK
Unique words: 178.0 204.123752495 87% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.493074792244 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 612.9 705.55239521 87% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 16.0 19.7664670659 81% => 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: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 26.5327038765 57.8364921388 46% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 122.6875 119.503703932 103% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.5625 23.324526521 97% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.5 5.70786347227 131% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.352759949134 0.218282227539 162% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.119179280533 0.0743258471296 160% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.116879881429 0.0701772020484 167% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.193784538645 0.128457276422 151% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.122922907501 0.0628817314937 195% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.69 48.3550499002 84% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.1 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.57 12.5979740519 116% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.19 8.32208582834 110% => OK
difficult_words: 102.0 98.500998004 104% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => 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.