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 s

Essay topics:

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 writer argues that the committee should reduce the funding for enrolments in public schools along with the reduction in budget for athletics playing fields so that sufficient amount of funds are available for activities that are used by adults. It is based on the premises that birth-rate is declining, thus enrolments in public schools would decline, but adult population is expected to rise. The argument seems true at first sight, however, on deeper analysis it becomes clear that certain relevant aspects have not been taken into account, leading to a number of unverified evidences and logical flaws.

One such unverified evidence is the cause and effect relationship between decline in birth-rate and consequent decline in enrolments. In other words, the writer has assumed that the reduction in birth-rate of the city will cause a decline in enrolments. However, there may be the case that where enrolments are depend on the students from other city as well, since it may find that public schools in this city are considered as good schools in this city and its near-by cities as well, therefore, parents in other cities are willing to get enrolled their children in public schools of this city. Therefore, enrolments may increase in future. Therefore, in order to overcome this flaw, the writer should evaluate the evidence on children from other cities enrolled in the public schools of this city.

Moreover, the writer has unverified evidence on analogical relationship between enrolments and athletics. In other words, the writer has assumed that only children who are enrolled in public schools are inclined to athletics, thus decline in birth-rate will also cause a decline in athletics. However, there may be the case that athletics and other recreational facilities of this city are renowned in other cities as well and its services are available at cheaper rates, thus parents from other cities are inclined to get their children enrolled in athletics services of this city and it may also find that parents of this city have penchant for their children to get enrolled in athletics since athletics is considered as more important than education in the city. Thus, athletics would be in demand. Therefore, in order to render the argument valid, the writer should evaluate the evidence on interests of parents and children for athletics.

Finally, the writer has arbitrarily ignored the evidence on contribution of education and athletics in overall budget. In other words, the writer has assumed that these two particulars contribute significantly in the overall city budget that the reduction in their amounts would make the funds available for other desired activities. However, there may be the case that contribution of these two particulars are miniscule and other particulars such as funding for the development of roads, hospitals, industries and other public infrastructure is significant to influence the amount of budget. And moreover, it may also find that due to the increased economic growth the budget amount for these particulars cannot be reduced, thus it may affect the amount of funds for other desired particulars. Thus, the writer needs to evaluate the evidence on the amount of different particulars that can influence the total budget amount.

While concluding, after close examination of the argument presented, it is apparent that the argument as it stands now is considerably flawed due to its reliance on certain unverified evidences. The recommendations in the above paragraphs show how the argument may be strengthened and made more logically sound in order to evaluate the viability of the proposed recommendation.

Votes
Average: 8.2 (3 votes)
Essay Categories

Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 312, Rule ID: BEEN_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Consider using a past participle here: 'depended'.
Suggestion: depended
...y be the case that where enrolments are depend on the students from other city as well...
^^^^^^
Line 5, column 632, Rule ID: IN_PAST[1]
Message: Did you mean: 'in the future'?
Suggestion: in the future
...ity. Therefore, enrolments may increase in future. Therefore, in order to overcome this f...
^^^^^^^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, therefore, thus, well, while, such as, in other words

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 43.0 28.8173652695 149% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 86.0 55.5748502994 155% => OK
Nominalization: 25.0 16.3942115768 152% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3102.0 2260.96107784 137% => OK
No of words: 585.0 441.139720559 133% => OK
Chars per words: 5.30256410256 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.9180050066 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.83191169811 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 209.0 204.123752495 102% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.357264957265 0.468620217663 76% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 986.4 705.55239521 140% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 29.0 22.8473053892 127% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 96.3254898768 57.8364921388 167% => OK
Chars per sentence: 155.1 119.503703932 130% => OK
Words per sentence: 29.25 23.324526521 125% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.9 5.70786347227 103% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.114602652372 0.218282227539 53% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0385130306154 0.0743258471296 52% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0281678049911 0.0701772020484 40% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0669673176026 0.128457276422 52% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0280525730744 0.0628817314937 45% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.2 14.3799401198 127% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 33.58 48.3550499002 69% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.8 12.197005988 130% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.05 12.5979740519 112% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.15 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 114.0 98.500998004 116% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 19.0 12.3882235529 153% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.6 11.1389221557 122% => OK
text_standard: 19.0 11.9071856287 160% => 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.

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: 20 15
No. of Words: 585 350
No. of Characters: 3024 1500
No. of Different Words: 205 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.918 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.169 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.761 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 231 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 179 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 132 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 87 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 29.25 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 16.861 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.95 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.358 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.568 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.15 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5