The following appeared as part of an article in a Dillton newspaper.
"In an effort to bring new jobs to Dillton and stimulate the city's flagging economy, Dillton's city council voted last year to lower the city's corporate tax rate by 15 percent; at the same time, the city began offering generous relocation grants to any company that would move to Dillton. Since these changes went into effect, two new factories have opened in Dillton. Although the two factories employ more than 1,000 people, the unemployment rate in Dillton remains unchanged. The only clear explanation for this is that the new factories are staffed with out-of-town workers rather than Dillton residents."
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.
According to the given passage, it argues that the reason the unemployment rate in Dillton was not changed is that the two new factories in Dillton hired those workers from other towns. Although it might be true, it seems possible to explain the given situations alternatively.
Firstly, the number of fired employees of other companies in Dillton might have increased, and it offset the number of newly hired employees by new factories. The given passage says that the city’s economy was flagging, and it might imply factories or companies in Dillton might have suffered from financial issues. When a company faces financial trouble, in general, it reduces the number of workers to save money. Thus, due to the economic crisis in companies of Dillton, other companies might have fired many employees, and it resulted in the unchanged unemployment rate compromising the new hires in the new factories. If then, the argument will be undermined.
Secondly, hiring 1,000 people might not a significant number to Dillton. Perhaps Dillton is a megacity such as Seoul in Korea or Tokyo in Japan, so the number of its residents is more than a million. If then, although the new factories hire new 1,000 employees only from those who live in Dillton, the unemployment rate might seem unchanged. In this case, the argument cannot hold water.
Thirdly, many of the workers of two newly opened factories might have been the members of the companies that opened factories in Dillton. Perhaps the new factories are subordinated to headquarters, and the companies might have reassigned the workers living in Dillton to the newly opened factories. In this case, although the new factories’ workers are not full of those who live outside of the town, there is no significant change in the unemployment rate. Thus, it weakens the argument.
To sum up, there are several other possible explanations for the given situation, and it cannot be concluded that the unchanged rate of unemployment is related to that the workers of the two new factories are from outside of the town. If the writer fails to provide enough evidence to prove those mentioned alternative situations are not true, the argument cannot be plausible.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 364 350
No. of Characters: 1792 1500
No. of Different Words: 145 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.368 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.923 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.658 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 126 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 103 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 66 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 50 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.412 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.617 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.647 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.372 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.372 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.072 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, firstly, if, second, secondly, so, then, third, thirdly, thus, in general, such as, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1853.0 2260.96107784 82% => OK
No of words: 364.0 441.139720559 83% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.09065934066 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.36792674256 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.76909449342 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 151.0 204.123752495 74% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.414835164835 0.468620217663 89% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 572.4 705.55239521 81% => 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: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 56.5010334596 57.8364921388 98% => OK
Chars per sentence: 109.0 119.503703932 91% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.4117647059 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.88235294118 5.70786347227 103% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.147831224562 0.218282227539 68% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0541767906214 0.0743258471296 73% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0491886460092 0.0701772020484 70% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0936665635757 0.128457276422 73% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0392073699235 0.0628817314937 62% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.2 14.3799401198 92% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.24 12.5979740519 97% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.97 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 76.0 98.500998004 77% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.