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 chairperson of the West Egg Town Council argues that the current space in their landfill will be sufficient for longer period of time. To justify his prediction, he makes some unwarranted assumptions based on a survey and their residents’ commitment to recycling. This argument is full of holes and lacks concrete evidence which without examining these pieces of evidence may fall apart.
First of all, the author makes a correlation between the garbage disposal and the recycled materials. There is no evidence in the argument that shows garbage disposal will be decreased due to the increasing amount of recycling. It’s possible that the amount of garbage disposal will increase despite the increasing of recycling. Garbage disposals consist of recycling materials and non-recycling materials. Hence, if the amount of non-recycling materials still is high, despite the fact that residents increase recycling, the landfill’s space would be no longer sufficient for the town, and the argument cannot hold water.
Also, the author did not mention that their town whether has any manufactures or industries. The household’s garbage disposal may include a small amount of garbage that has left in the landfill. In this case, if the households increase their recycling and still manufactures and industries do not recycle, then the amount of garbage would not necessarily decrease. Therefore, the conclusion mentioned in the argument will be invalid.
Finally, the chairperson uses a survey as an evidence without elaborating more about this survey’s demographics and methodology. How many residents did participate in the survey? What were the other questions of the survey? Likely, the survey consists of only one question about the recycling and it asked the residents whether they will participate in recycling more in future or not. Their eagerness to recycling is not equal to the fact that they will do it insistently in the future. Without knowing more evidence about the survey, the author cannot conclude that the town’s residents are commitment to recycle the materials.
All in all, the original argument, as it stands now, is flawed due to the lack of solid pieces of evidence. The chairperson of the West Egg Town Council should examine further evidence to be able to convince the reader that the landfill will have space for the longer time than predicted.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 379 350
No. of Characters: 1952 1500
No. of Different Words: 169 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.412 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.15 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.761 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 149 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 118 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 89 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 57 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.95 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.032 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.4 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.33 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.511 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.109 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 124, Rule ID: PERIOD_OF_TIME[1]
Message: Use simply 'period'.
Suggestion: period
... landfill will be sufficient for longer period of time. To justify his prediction, he makes so...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...n, and the argument cannot hold water. Also, the author did not mention that th...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, finally, first, hence, if, may, so, still, then, therefore, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 12.0 19.6327345309 61% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 46.0 55.5748502994 83% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2023.0 2260.96107784 89% => OK
No of words: 379.0 441.139720559 86% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.33773087071 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.41224685777 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.87668893239 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 176.0 204.123752495 86% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.46437994723 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 622.8 705.55239521 88% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 42.2823840387 57.8364921388 73% => OK
Chars per sentence: 101.15 119.503703932 85% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.95 23.324526521 81% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.9 5.70786347227 68% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.13098477071 0.218282227539 60% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0442980185544 0.0743258471296 60% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.052030856879 0.0701772020484 74% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0857403304771 0.128457276422 67% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0382656133283 0.0628817314937 61% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.2 14.3799401198 92% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 53.21 48.3550499002 110% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.69 12.5979740519 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.24 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 89.0 98.500998004 90% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.