The following appeared in a memorandum written by the chairperson of the West Egg Town Council.
"Two years ago, consultants predicted that West Egg's landfill, which is used for garbage disposal, would be completely filled within five years. During the past two years, however, the town's residents have been recycling twice as much material as they did in previous years. Next month the amount of recycled material — which includes paper, plastic, and metal — should further increase, since charges for pickup of other household garbage will double. Furthermore, over 90 percent of the respondents to a recent survey said that they would do more recycling in the future. Because of our town's strong commitment to recycling, the available space in our landfill should last for considerably longer than predicted."
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 the above statement, the author claims that landfill place in the West Egg Town Council will last longer than they expected, due to higher volition of the residents for recycling. While supporting the argument, however, the author makes numerous assumptions which cannot be taken for granted, thus the claim remains largely unconvincing without further proof to verify unjustified assumptions.
First and foremost, the author bases his or her argument on the pre-supposition that the participation of the residents to recycling has been doubled, meaning that they are willing to recycle their waste, based on the recent trend for the past two years. However, the author may have neglected the possibilities that the it was an ephemeral or an exceptional case, as the period of data collection is relatively brief. For instance, the trend can be changed sooner or later when they feel uncomfortable to carry on recycling practices. Also, if the technology for recycling has not kept up with their determination, they would more likely to give up recycling and come back to their original way of disposing waste. Therefore, it is necessary to provide the general trend, from long-term data or further observation, as the argument is weakened or strengthened by it.
Secondly, closed to this is the author’s assertion that more than nine out of ten citizens are willing to engage in recycling. Yet, it is not evident that the sample number of the survey is significant in its size and can be enough representative of the whole population to anticipate the general reponse about recylcing. As a vivid example, what if the survey was based on 1% of people of all the residents, or the sample subjects shared similar lifestyle, values, and mindsets about environmental conservation? They may be more willing to recycle their waste than common people. This would have engendered biased results and degraded the quality and reliability of the survey. Hence, the author, in support of his or her clain, should have provided the evidence pertaining that the survey data are well representative of the general people in the city about their thought for recycling.
Lastly, although people are devoted to involve in recycling practices of waste, it does not necessarily guarantee the successful reduction of the waste to go to landfills. This is mainly due to the fact that other factors can be more significant to determine the degree of the success for reducing the waste than the mere determination of people. For instance, if the city is not equipped with appropriate facilities and technology for recycling, the residents would face huge problems in terms of engaging in their continual recycling, as it would not be properly supported by the city authority. In light of this, for the memorandum to be cogent, the author should have considered whether other factors may not be necessary in order to bring off the desired result.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- not OK.
argument 2 -- not OK
argument 3 -- not exactly
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ??? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 480 350
No. of Characters: 2392 1500
No. of Different Words: 234 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.681 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.983 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.811 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 172 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 131 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 95 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 69 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 28.235 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.833 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.765 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.328 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.514 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.072 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
on what ground do you think
on what ground do you think my arguement is not appropriate?
need to analyze the structure
need to analyze the structure of the statement and argue accordingly:
argument 1：
During the past two years, however, the town's residents have been recycling twice as much material as they did in previous years.
//maybe there are twice as much garbage too
argument 2：
Next month the amount of recycled material — which includes paper, plastic, and metal — should further increase, since charges for pickup of other household garbage will double.
//maybe people are rich or too busy and ignore the double charges
argument 3：
Furthermore, over 90 percent of the respondents to a recent survey said that they would do more recycling in the future.
//'do more recycling' is not equal to 'will do actually'
argument 4：
Because of our town's strong commitment to recycling, the available space in our landfill should last for considerably longer than predicted.
//also depends on how much landfill filled. for example, suppose 5/4 of landfill has been filled in the past two years, or a lot of new people have moved to this city, then the available space in the landfill will not last for considerably longer than predicted.
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 318, Rule ID: DT_PRP[1]
Message: Possible typo. Did you mean 'the' or 'it'?
Suggestion: the; it
...y have neglected the possibilities that the it was an ephemeral or an exceptional case...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, hence, however, if, lastly, may, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, thus, well, while, for instance
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 34.0 28.8173652695 118% => OK
Preposition: 66.0 55.5748502994 119% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2461.0 2260.96107784 109% => OK
No of words: 480.0 441.139720559 109% => OK
Chars per words: 5.12708333333 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.68069463864 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.92275480664 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 243.0 204.123752495 119% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.50625 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 774.9 705.55239521 110% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 28.0 22.8473053892 123% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 47.7779610701 57.8364921388 83% => OK
Chars per sentence: 144.764705882 119.503703932 121% => OK
Words per sentence: 28.2352941176 23.324526521 121% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.82352941176 5.70786347227 120% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.112197573238 0.218282227539 51% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0358202821499 0.0743258471296 48% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0369572193 0.0701772020484 53% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0764998348333 0.128457276422 60% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0403891400193 0.0628817314937 64% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.9 14.3799401198 118% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.06 48.3550499002 89% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.2 12.197005988 116% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.77 12.5979740519 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.4 8.32208582834 113% => OK
difficult_words: 133.0 98.500998004 135% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.0 12.3882235529 145% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.2 11.1389221557 119% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.