The following appeared as part of the Dean’s newsletter:
"The University of Wabash is considering a community service requirement for all undergraduate and graduate students. We believe that the objective of any university is to produce well-rounded and charitable members of society. The proposed graduation requirement would be to complete at least 8 hours of unpaid community service per month for a total of 9 months. The Dean’s office will maintain a list of approved local charities on its website with contact information. This is a fantastic opportunity for students to give back to the community and gain real-world working experience. Most importantly, local charities in need will receive the help that they need to continue their efforts."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
Dean of The University of Wabash wants all undergraduate and garduate students to complete at least 8 hours of unpaid community service for a toatl of 9 months hoping to produce well-rounded and charitable members of society. The argument is flawed for numerous reasons as it relies on various stated and unstated assumptions which make it weak.
The Dean believes in producing charitable members of society by pressurizing all the undergraduate and graduate student to undergo compulsory community service. The feeling to do good for community won't reciprocate if it is thrown as something compulsory on all the students. Rather, it comes by instinct. Additionally, this compulsory program can even make students ridicule community service because it is something imposed on them. It's not whimsical. Undergraduate and garduate students have to devote a lot of their time in studies. So, they are left over with very less leisure time. And now the University wants a part out of their already less free time. This can lead to a disregard to the community work in some students. They will do this out of compulsion and not because they like to do it. Some students can get to such an extent where they actually start disliking community service and won't do any community service once they graduate. Also, 8 hours work for 9 months results in 72 hour of total work which is 3 days in total. This is a lot of time for someone who is already under much academic pressure.
The argument also make an unwarranted assumption that each and every student will get guarranted 8 hours of community service every month in an approved local charity. What if someone is not able to get 8 hours of work in a local charity and has to travel a long way out of the district to complete his quota of 8 hour work. In such case, the travelling hours should also be counted. Furthermore, the University should provide with the additional travelling expenses. The students are already paying a lot to the University and the expense is handled mostly by their parents. By making community service a compulsion on the students, the University is actually increasing the monetary burden on the students' parents. The University should rather introduce some free humanity courses and focus on making students that are economically, physically and emotionally able to do community serivce once they graduate.
In conclusion, the argument, as it stands now, is considerably flawed due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. The University should reconsider imposing such compulsory task.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 8 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 9 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 429 350
No. of Characters: 2113 1500
No. of Different Words: 193 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.551 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.925 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.841 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 158 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 133 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 92 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 56 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.875 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.378 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.458 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.282 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.282 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.067 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 161, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...o undergo compulsory community service. The feeling to do good for community wont r...
^^^
Line 2, column 997, Rule ID: CD_NN[1]
Message: Possible agreement error. The noun 'hour' seems to be countable, so consider using: 'hours'.
Suggestion: hours
...8 hours work for 9 months results in 72 hour of total work which is 3 days in total....
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, furthermore, if, so, well, as to, at least, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 56.0 55.5748502994 101% => OK
Nominalization: 5.0 16.3942115768 30% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2147.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 427.0 441.139720559 97% => OK
Chars per words: 5.0281030445 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.54576487731 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.91001488478 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 198.0 204.123752495 97% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.463700234192 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 695.7 705.55239521 99% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 22.8473053892 74% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 50.6639253644 57.8364921388 88% => OK
Chars per sentence: 89.4583333333 119.503703932 75% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.7916666667 23.324526521 76% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.04166666667 5.70786347227 53% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.27173448018 0.218282227539 124% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0733271707254 0.0743258471296 99% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0824805313327 0.0701772020484 118% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.168308091743 0.128457276422 131% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0852978677966 0.0628817314937 136% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.2 14.3799401198 78% => 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: 11.6 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.07 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 97.0 98.500998004 98% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 15.5 12.3882235529 125% => 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: 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.