The following appeared as a recommendation by a committee planning a ten-year budget for the city of Calatrava."The birthrate in our city is declining: in fact, last year's birthrate was only one-half that of five years ago. Thus the number of students enrolled in our public schools will soon decrease dramatically, and we can safely reduce the funds budgeted for education during the next decade. At the same time, we can reduce funding for athletic playing fields and other recreational facilities. As a result, we will have sufficient money to fund city facilities and programs used primarily by adults, since we can expect the adult population of the city to increase."
In the argument, the authors concludes that there will soon be a drastic fall of the number of students enrolled in public schools. He comes to this conclusion based on his assumption that birthrate declines yearly. While the assertion from the author might prove true, as it stands now, the arguments relies on three unwarranted assumptions that hamper it's credibility.
To begin with, the author assumes that birthrate decline will continue to persist each year, but this might not be the case. Perhaps, many families might have done family planning on the number of children that they want to have maybe due to financial difficulties which initially led to a decline in birthrate. But since change is what is constant, families might decide to start having large number of children as a result of financial breakthrough or the fact that they lost one or more of their children to death. In addition, people who have been looking for the fruit of the womb might receive the God's divine intervention and begin to give birth to twins, triplets, quadruple etc. If either scenario proves true, then the author argument about the continous decline in brithrate does not hold water.
Further more, the author assumes that the facilities and programs that will be funded for will only be used by adults since they will continue to increase. However, this might not be the case. For instance, several adults might decides to relocate to other places due to good jobs gotten or due to a job transfer or because they have newly gotten married and want to change environment. Moreover, hight death rate might be recorded among adults due to criminal act because of the burning desire to make wealth very quickly or prostitution resulting in deadly diseases and death. If these scenario above proves true, then the author's contention is considerably hindered.
Finally, the author is assuming five years ago to be the same as last year. Maybe, this assumption might not be true. Perhaps, there were large number of people who immigrated to the city of Calatrava thus resulting in high birth rate. These immigrants might have relocated to other places due to favourable weather condition, good job employment, or social amenities. Also, there might have been bad governance five years ago that allows the influential ones to ride upon the less privileged. Rape might have been rampared that resulted in the hight birth rate compared to last year.
In conclusion, the decline in birthrate might be true. However, the author needs to consider the above explanations if he hopes to bolster its persuasiveness. The author should provide evidence as to why he claims that birthrate will continue to decline in years to come.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 8 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 8 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 453 350
No. of Characters: 2210 1500
No. of Different Words: 231 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.613 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.879 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.492 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 152 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 109 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 80 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 44 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.571 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.126 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.316 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.518 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.09 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 583, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'this scenario' or 'these scenarios'?
Suggestion: this scenario; these scenarios
...ulting in deadly diseases and death. If these scenario above proves true, then the authors con...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 626, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...se scenario above proves true, then the authors contention is considerably hindered. ...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 586, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...hight birth rate compared to last year. In conclusion, the decline in birthrate ...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, however, if, look, may, moreover, so, then, thus, while, as to, for instance, in addition, in conclusion, as a result, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 63.0 55.5748502994 113% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2268.0 2260.96107784 100% => OK
No of words: 453.0 441.139720559 103% => OK
Chars per words: 5.00662251656 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.61343653406 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.57283608109 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 229.0 204.123752495 112% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.505518763797 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 696.6 705.55239521 99% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 47.7488479373 57.8364921388 83% => OK
Chars per sentence: 103.090909091 119.503703932 86% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.5909090909 23.324526521 88% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.90909090909 5.70786347227 121% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.184768779356 0.218282227539 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0627155842213 0.0743258471296 84% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0692041580108 0.0701772020484 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.111820856842 0.128457276422 87% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0644736000382 0.0628817314937 103% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.5 14.3799401198 87% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 59.64 48.3550499002 123% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.78 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.15 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 101.0 98.500998004 103% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.