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.
At first glance, the author's argument appears to be convincing, but further scrutiny reveals that a lot of conclusions have been formed without concrete evidence which substantiates the given claims. In order to evaluate the argument, we need to analyze the text and look for additional proof.
The argument states that consultants believe the landfill of West Egg town will be filled up in five years because of increased recycling. It is said that people are recycling twice the amount of garbage which includes paper, plastic and metal. There is no mention of the ratio of these items to the rest of the items like wet garbage. Unless numerical data is provided, the effect of increased rate of recycling on the amount of garbage generated is unknown.
Secondly, the data about recycling two years prior to the current day is unavailable. We dont know if people were recycling 1% percent of their garbage or 10%. In the former part of the previous statement, the increase in recycling is negligible but in the latter case, it is humongous. We need more information to accurately evaluate the effects of recycling.
Thirdly, the data about the number of residents who took the survey is unknown. If only 10 people are surveyed, the legitimacy of the argument is weakened. The accuracy of the survey must also be questioned here. We have no knowledge about the questions asked in the survey. Unless the validity and accuracy of the survey is provided, this piece of information becomes irrelevant.
Furthermore, information about other factors like increase in population or an increase in industrial hubs which will lead to a proportionate increase in the garbage generated is not given. These factures, in conjunction with recycling will decide when the landfill will be filled.
The argument consists of weak ideas, mixed issues and equivocal claims due to the flaws mentioned above in the line of reasoning. There is a possibility that the landfill may take a long time to be filled up, but the reasoning given is rife with flaws and inaccuracies. Therefore, it is extremely important to find the evidences that support the claims of the author. And only after finding the evidences, the following topic can be strengthened.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 2 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 6 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 371 350
No. of Characters: 1815 1500
No. of Different Words: 192 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.389 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.892 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.716 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 131 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 104 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 80 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 50 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.667 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.71 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.524 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.288 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.567 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.091 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 22, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
At first glance, the authors argument appears to be convincing, but ...
^^^^^^^
Line 2, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...he text and look for additional proof. The argument states that consultants bel...
^^^^
Line 3, column 269, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...lastic and metal. There is no mention of the ratio of these items to the rest of ...
^^
Line 5, column 91, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...r to the current day is unavailable. We dont know if people were recycling 1% percen...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, furthermore, if, look, may, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, third, thirdly
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 16.0 28.8173652695 56% => OK
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1882.0 2260.96107784 83% => OK
No of words: 371.0 441.139720559 84% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.07277628032 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.38877662729 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.817445319 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 196.0 204.123752495 96% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.528301886792 0.468620217663 113% => OK
syllable_count: 596.7 705.55239521 85% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 22.8473053892 74% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 37.2686514507 57.8364921388 64% => OK
Chars per sentence: 89.619047619 119.503703932 75% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.6666666667 23.324526521 76% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.71428571429 5.70786347227 83% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => 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: 0.155395864215 0.218282227539 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0395783670438 0.0743258471296 53% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0666339130588 0.0701772020484 95% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0714546882391 0.128457276422 56% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0557518576397 0.0628817314937 89% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.3 14.3799401198 79% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 54.22 48.3550499002 112% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.83 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.48 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 94.0 98.500998004 95% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.8 11.1389221557 79% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.