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.
The author of the memorandum concludes that the space in the West Egg's landfill would last longer than predicted because the town residents are strongly committed to recycling. The author suggests several evidences to justify such conclusion. While this conclusion may seem plausible, the memorandum is filled with holes and assumptions which will be discussed below.
First of all, the author assumes that if the charge of picking up other household garbage is doubled, more materials would be recycled. However, the causal effect of doubling the charge and the residents recycling more is unwarranted. There could be many reasons why residents have been throwing out the household materials as garbage instead of recycling might not have been due to low price of the pickup charge. Maybe the materials they have thrown out as garbage were not meant to be recycled. The residents simply could have not used much products that can produce materials that should be recycled. Or else, both the amount of garbage being thrown away and the amount of recycling may have been frivolous. For the author to use such evidence to uphold his/her claim, he/she would have to provide us a warranted casual relationship between the pickup charge and recycling.
Furthermore, the author makes a clear mistake of using an unvalidated survey result to advocate the conclusion of the memorandum. It is not clear how many respondents has responded to the survey. If only ten out of a thousand residents responded for the survey, then even though over 90 percent of the respondents agreed to recycle more, the result would be negligible. All the while, we do not know if the respondents represent the whole community of West Egg Town. The respondents who answered the survey could be relatives of the West Egg Town Council or are actually from the West Egg Town Council which would make the result of the survey highly unreliable because they are the ones who are most concerned with such issue. In addition, he/she has not mentioned how specific 'recent' is. The survey could have been closed even before the amount of recycling has increased. For the author to use the survey to buttress the conclusion of the memorandum, he/she would have to patent the validity of the survey such as whether the respondents of the survey could represent the whole community and specify the date when the survey has been held.
To sum up, the chairperson of the West Egg Town Council claims that because the town residents are strongly committed to recycling, the available space of the landfill would last longer than predicted. While it might seem justifiable, through thorough investigation and looking at the memorandum from different point of views, clearly there are enough flaws such as use of an invalid survey and the nebulous causal effect of the charge of pickup and recycling that makes the memorandum unwarranted. Such flaws would have to be eliminated for the author to justify his/her claim.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 11 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 499 350
No. of Characters: 2433 1500
No. of Different Words: 210 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.726 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.876 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.544 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 176 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 122 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 91 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 69 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.762 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.604 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.571 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.337 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.51 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.155 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
The author of the memorandum concludes t...
^^
Line 2, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...mptions which will be discussed below. First of all, the author assumes that if...
^^^
Line 2, column 542, Rule ID: MUCH_COUNTABLE[1]
Message: Use 'many' with countable nouns.
Suggestion: many
...he residents simply could have not used much products that can produce materials tha...
^^^^
Line 3, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...tween the pickup charge and recycling. Furthermore, the author makes a clear mi...
^^
Line 4, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...he date when the survey has been held. To sum up, the chairperson of the West E...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, first, furthermore, however, if, look, may, so, then, while, in addition, such as, first of all, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 58.0 55.5748502994 104% => OK
Nominalization: 3.0 16.3942115768 18% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2480.0 2260.96107784 110% => OK
No of words: 494.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 5.02024291498 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.71445763274 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.618823024 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 212.0 204.123752495 104% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.429149797571 0.468620217663 92% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 761.4 705.55239521 108% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 68.047835649 57.8364921388 118% => OK
Chars per sentence: 118.095238095 119.503703932 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.5238095238 23.324526521 101% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.7619047619 5.70786347227 101% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 12.0 4.67664670659 257% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.208524848896 0.218282227539 96% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0669890747022 0.0743258471296 90% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0659663267167 0.0701772020484 94% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.147417974604 0.128457276422 115% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0413813236893 0.0628817314937 66% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.0 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 56.59 48.3550499002 117% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.13 12.5979740519 96% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.91 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 98.0 98.500998004 99% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
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.