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."
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 committee recommends that the city of Calatrava should reduce the funds budgeted for public schools, athlete playing fields and other recreational facilities since the birthrate is plummeting and use that to finance city facilities and programs used primarily by adults, as they expect the adult population to increase does not make a logically compelling case as it disregards certain crucial assumptions.
First of all, the argument posits that the birthrate is decreasing and that last year’s birthrate was only one-half that of five years ago. However, there is no statistical information provided that can validate this claim. Also, the reason of declining birthrate could be that people have migrated from the city and there is a significant fall in the overall population. Had the author presented the demographics that could confirm these facts, the claim would not have rendered it flawed.
On the other hand, since the writer’s claim of plunging population cannot be justified, the point of safely reducing the educational budget is questionable. There may come a time when the population reinstates or there may be an influx of people from other places that could escalate the school going population.
In addition the writer also fails to provide a direct relation between the school going population and athletic playing fields and other recreational facilities. Are those facilities only used by students? Does no other person from the city use them? Or the access is limited to a people of certain age? The insufficiency of the information based on the raised questions leads to question its veracity.
Finally, it is proffered that the funds saved should be used on the city facilities used primarily by adults, since the adult population is expected to rise. However, no sufficient data is provided that it will be the case.
Based on the above mentioned fallacies, the argument lacks to make a cogent case in explaining why the city of Calatrava should be reducing its budgeted funds from public schools, athletic playing fields and recreational facilities and using them on the city facilities primarily used by adults.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
This is not the writing style for GRE arguments, like:
First of all, the argument posits that the birthrate is decreasing and that last year’s birthrate was only one-half that of five years ago. However, there is no statistical information provided that can validate this claim.
We don't question those data, instead we need to find out the logical flaws among those data. Like we may say:
There is no correlation between the decline of birthrate and the decreased enrollments. the number of students who enroll at local school may remain or even increase because some families with children may move to Calatrava.
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'On the other hand' means However. It doesn't mean 'On another hand'.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 345 350
No. of Characters: 1765 1500
No. of Different Words: 169 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.31 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.116 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.736 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 129 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 95 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 77 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 14.269 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.533 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.331 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.515 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.074 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 6, column 4, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[2]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: addition,
...late the school going population. In addition the writer also fails to provide a dire...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, finally, first, however, if, may, so, in addition, first of all, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 38.0 55.5748502994 68% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1821.0 2260.96107784 81% => OK
No of words: 345.0 441.139720559 78% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.27826086957 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.3097767484 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.83782179042 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 168.0 204.123752495 82% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.486956521739 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 572.4 705.55239521 81% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => 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: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 95.1505473798 57.8364921388 165% => OK
Chars per sentence: 121.4 119.503703932 102% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.0 23.324526521 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.86666666667 5.70786347227 103% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.197418758105 0.218282227539 90% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0657473343486 0.0743258471296 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.113601699399 0.0701772020484 162% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0997899825562 0.128457276422 78% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0866616163746 0.0628817314937 138% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.9 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 39.67 48.3550499002 82% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.64 12.5979740519 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.58 8.32208582834 103% => OK
difficult_words: 83.0 98.500998004 84% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 20.0 12.3882235529 161% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.