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 pas

Essay topics:

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 evidences the chairperson listed to bolster his claim seem to be eloquent at first glance, but on close examination, they have some logical flaws which undermine the precision of the claim, including the increasing amount of recycled materials in past two years, the survey they made to express the willingness of the public to recycle household materials, etc.

To begin with, the chairperson mentioned the increase of recycled materials in past two years. It would be more persuasive if the chairperson could also provide the demographic data of the town in past two years, as it is possible that the increase of recycled stuff is only a result of increasing population. With more people living in the town, more garbage will be produced and thus expedite the process of filling the landfill. Moreover, even if there’re more materials are recycled, it does not equate the producing speed of other garbage will decelerate at the same time. Hence, if the amount of disposal waste also increases significantly as well as the recycled materials, the chairperson could hardly justify his claim that the residents have strong commitment to recycling.

Secondly, the assumption that higher charges for pickup of other garbage will raise the amount of recycled materials is unrealistic. As we all know, some household garbage like food waste is not recyclable. The rise of the pickup fee for this stuff may only increase the dissatisfactory of the public instead of encouraging people to recycle more materials. Thus, more investigation should be done to figure out the current recycling status of the residents. If people have already had a good habit of recycling wastes and the recycling rate is quite high, the policy of increasing the pickup fee should not be imposed on the public.

Finally, the chairperson presented a result from a survey to support his claim, which is more than 90 percent of the respondents said they will recycle more stuff in the future. As the chairperson did not mention the detailed information about this survey, I have doubts on such a survey. It is entirely possible that this survey is conducted in a specifically selected community and it can not stand for the overall status. To better support the claim, the chairperson should provide evidence to prove the reliability of the survey. In addition, even if the survey is scientifically organised and the data is precise, the real situation could vary considerably, because many people tend to be too optimistic about their willingness to recycle.

In sum, the claim of the chairperson about the current and future recycling status in town is not credible. Rather than presenting the recycling status, direct evidence about the decline of trash going to the landfill is more effective to draw the conclusion that landfill will reach its capacity slower than expected.

Votes
Average: 6.2 (1 vote)
Essay Categories

Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 381, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... town, more garbage will be produced and thus expedite the process of filling the...
^^
Line 5, column 364, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... people to recycle more materials. Thus, more investigation should be done to fig...
^^

Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'but', 'finally', 'first', 'hence', 'if', 'may', 'moreover', 'second', 'secondly', 'so', 'thus', 'well', 'in addition', 'as well as', 'to begin with']

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.228682170543 0.25644967241 89% => OK
Verbs: 0.158914728682 0.15541462614 102% => OK
Adjectives: 0.093023255814 0.0836205057962 111% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0600775193798 0.0520304965353 115% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0290697674419 0.0272364105082 107% => OK
Prepositions: 0.124031007752 0.125424944231 99% => OK
Participles: 0.0426356589147 0.0416121511921 102% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.84562168072 2.79052419416 102% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0290697674419 0.026700313972 109% => OK
Particles: 0.00193798449612 0.001811407834 107% => OK
Determiners: 0.12984496124 0.113004496875 115% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0271317829457 0.0255425247493 106% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.00581395348837 0.0127820249294 45% => Some subClauses wanted starting by 'Which, Who, What, Whom, Whose.....'

Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2866.0 2731.13054187 105% => OK
No of words: 469.0 446.07635468 105% => OK
Chars per words: 6.11087420043 6.12365571057 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.65364457471 4.57801047555 102% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.381663113006 0.378187486979 101% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.285714285714 0.287650121315 99% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.208955223881 0.208842608468 100% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.155650319829 0.135150697306 115% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.84562168072 2.79052419416 102% => OK
Unique words: 220.0 207.018472906 106% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.46908315565 0.469332199767 100% => OK
Word variations: 52.9909261886 52.1807786196 102% => OK
How many sentences: 18.0 20.039408867 90% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0555555556 23.2022227129 112% => OK
Sentence length SD: 66.1732900874 57.7814097925 115% => OK
Chars per sentence: 159.222222222 141.986410481 112% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.0555555556 23.2022227129 112% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.888888888889 0.724660767414 123% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 3.58251231527 56% => OK
Readability: 54.626984127 51.9672348444 105% => OK
Elegance: 1.59375 1.8405768891 87% => OK

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.429837443366 0.441005458295 97% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.165251534015 0.135418324435 122% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.090470650059 0.0829849096947 109% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.657817691159 0.58762219726 112% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.162508373091 0.147661913831 110% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.223586829757 0.193483328276 116% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0706984300975 0.0970749176394 73% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.568205371958 0.42659136922 133% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0472389018292 0.0774707102158 61% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.328002527079 0.312017818177 105% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.039568749722 0.0698173142475 57% => The ideas may be duplicated in paragraphs.

Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.33743842365 108% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.87684729064 58% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.82512315271 104% => OK
Positive topic words: 8.0 6.46551724138 124% => OK
Negative topic words: 2.0 5.36822660099 37% => OK
Neutral topic words: 3.0 2.82389162562 106% => OK
Total topic words: 13.0 14.657635468 89% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

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Rates: 62.5 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.75 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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Note: This is not the final score. 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.