The following appeared as part of an editorial in a weekly newsmagazine:
“Historically, most of this country’s engineers have come from our universities; recently,
however, our university-age population has begun to shrink, and decreasing enrollments
in our high schools clearly show that this drop in numbers will continue throughout the
remainder of the decade. Consequently, our nation will soon be facing a shortage of
trained engineers. If we are to remain economically competitive in the world marketplace,
then we must increase funding for education—and quickly.”
The paragraph in the news magazine predicted that there will be shortage in trained engineers in the country for several years, which would lead to drop in economic competitiveness. Following this reasoning is the conclusion that we must increase funding for education right away. As it may appear plausible, the author had several flaws and gaps in the reasoning, without which the argument would stand weak.
First, based on historical tradition that engineers come from universities and the observation that high school enrollment and the population at the age to go to college is lowere than before, the author predicted shortage of engineers will occurr. However, the author did not take into account that in modern time, there are vocational schools specialized in training engineers. Although the high school enrollment is reduced, there might be more student enrolled in these vocational schools for engineers.
Furthermore, the author anticipated the decline in trained engineers because overall college population is shrinking, which overlooked the important denominator. For example, it is possible that the number of trained engineers will remain stable as more college student choose to study engineering as it provides a lucrative career. As shortage is considered in relation to need, it would also be possible that the need of engineers would decrease as the population shrink. So even though the absolute number is lower as compared with before, the proportion of engineers in the population would stay similar level.
Finally, the author concluded that to ensure global economic competitiveness, the country should provide more funding to education and quickly. However, the author failed to fill in the gap as to how engineers are important to economics and why education would solve this problem. Some may argue that policies in economy and global trading might have more direct effect on economy than education.
To wrap up, the author had several flaws in reaching the prediction that there will be shortage in trained engineers and the author did not provide explanations in concluding that funding education could help the nation remain competitive globally.
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: 14 15
No. of Words: 341 350
No. of Characters: 1807 1500
No. of Different Words: 168 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.297 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.299 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.749 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 148 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 115 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 78 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 56 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.357 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.934 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.714 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.372 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.633 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.086 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 509, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...these vocational schools for engineers. Furthermore, the author anticipated the ...
^^^^^^
Line 5, column 519, Rule ID: COMP_THAN[3]
Message: Comparison requires 'than', not 'then' nor 'as'.
Suggestion: than
...ven though the absolute number is lower as compared with before, the proportion of...
^^
Line 7, column 291, Rule ID: MASS_AGREEMENT[2]
Message: Possible agreement error - use third-person verb forms for singular and mass nouns: 'argues'.
Suggestion: argues
...tion would solve this problem. Some may argue that policies in economy and global tr...
^^^^^
Line 7, column 301, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... solve this problem. Some may argue that policies in economy and global trading m...
^^
Line 9, column 198, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ons in concluding that funding education could help the nation remain competitive...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, finally, first, furthermore, however, look, may, so, as to, for example
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 41.0 55.5748502994 74% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1856.0 2260.96107784 82% => OK
No of words: 341.0 441.139720559 77% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.44281524927 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.29722995808 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.82901084218 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 169.0 204.123752495 83% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.495601173021 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 582.3 705.55239521 83% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 43.3295982168 57.8364921388 75% => OK
Chars per sentence: 132.571428571 119.503703932 111% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.3571428571 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.5 5.70786347227 96% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => 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: 0.139601926486 0.218282227539 64% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0503918257948 0.0743258471296 68% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0494266294965 0.0701772020484 70% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0730781560593 0.128457276422 57% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0460251672953 0.0628817314937 73% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.4 14.3799401198 114% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 38.66 48.3550499002 80% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.57 12.5979740519 116% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.53 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 80.0 98.500998004 81% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 54.17 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.25 Out of 6
---------------------
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.