The following appeared on the Website Science News Today In a recent survey of more than 5 000 adolescents the teens who reported eating the most meals with their families were the least likely to use illegal drugs tobacco or alcohol Family meals were als

Essay topics:

The following appeared on the Website Science News Today.
"In a recent survey of more than 5,000 adolescents, the teens who reported eating the most meals with their families were the least likely to use illegal drugs, tobacco, or alcohol. Family meals were also associated with higher grades, better self-esteem, and lower rates of depression. Almost 30 percent of the teens said they ate at least seven meals per week with their families. Clearly, having a high number of family meals keeps teens from engaging in bad behaviors."

Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.

In this passage, we are informed that having more frequent family meals keep teens from engaging in bad behaviors. Referring to status of illegal substance usage, grade performance and mental health, the author ascribes less happening of those notorious acts to more family meals of them. Quite reasonable though such explanation appears at first glance, we cannot safely claim that it is the unique one that accounts for the fact presented in the argument. Thus, we need to consider more explanations, which could rival with the one proposed in the argument.

To start off, the author attributes less abuse of substance to more frequent family meals. While more get-together with parents might eliminate chances of committing such legal stuffings, the later could have sprung from other reasons as well. First of all, it is likely that respondents in this survey don't tell the truth to avoid further blames from parents. If this is the case, family meal's frequency could have nothing to do with less reporting count of illegal behavior relevant. Consequently, such seeming decline could be explained as stemming from teen's personal motivation for eschewing with excoriation. Second, while less illegal usage could be found for those teens, such diminishing of number could not be exclusively attributable to family impacts. Instead, it is of equal probability that schools of teens have enacted more strict regulation so that they are extremely anxious about the punishments. Once the assertion that family meal or even family impact is the determined factors for less illegal behaviors proves unwarranted, the underlying logic will be weakened.

Furthermore, better grade and mental status of teens could lend great support to the author's explanation that more family meals could contribute to teen's wholesome status. However, their improved sanity could be considered not only from family meals, but also presumably from other reasons as well. One possible reason is that they might gradually understand importance of GPA for their latter career, and therefore strived to pave way for their future profession life. Moreover, an alternative account might be that social fashion, which respected personal integrity, casted them great influence and forced them to abandon previous bad behaviors. Without additional information to evaluate which of those cases is true, we cannot decide which explanation could finally lead to the phenomenon mentioned above. It is even likely that all of the aforementioned reasons have conspired to such wholesome changes for teens' behaviors.

Last but not least, while we can admit for a moment that more family engagement indeed facilitate their salubrious changes of daily behaviors, it is reckless to claim that having more family meals play such significant role to such extent that such only motivation has reshaped teens' general habits with less bad behaviors. Other factors could readily compete with the one proposed in the argument. Impacts from their good friends with repute, hard requirements for self-esteem from their girlfriends or boyfriends are all possible factors that the previous erratic students have automatically restricted with their previous negative acts, which help themselves establish a better personal imagine.

In summary, while family meal or get-together have exerted great influence on teens, in the absence of sufficient information, we cannot establish a causal relationship between it and less illegal behaviors and even improvement of overall integrity status . Current improvement of teens' daily habit reported in the Website Science news Todays is such a case that we should consider more explanations which could rival with the one proposed in the argument.

Votes
Average: 5.9 (4 votes)
Essay Categories

Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 163, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ng to status of illegal substance usage, grade performance and mental health, the...
^^
Line 3, column 304, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
... likely that respondents in this survey dont tell the truth to avoid further blames ...
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Line 5, column 86, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...f teens could lend great support to the authors explanation that more family meals coul...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 721, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...o evaluate which of those cases is true, we cannot decide which explanation could...
^^
Line 5, column 835, Rule ID: ALL_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'all the'.
Suggestion: all the
...mentioned above. It is even likely that all of the aforementioned reasons have conspired t...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 224, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... family meals play such significant role to such extent that such only motivation...
^^
Line 9, column 256, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Don't put a space before the full stop
Suggestion: .
... improvement of overall integrity status . Current improvement of teens daily habi...
^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, consequently, finally, first, furthermore, however, if, moreover, second, so, therefore, thus, well, while, in summary, first of all

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

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 22.0 12.9520958084 170% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 22.0 13.6137724551 162% => OK
Pronoun: 48.0 28.8173652695 167% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 71.0 55.5748502994 128% => OK
Nominalization: 25.0 16.3942115768 152% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3169.0 2260.96107784 140% => OK
No of words: 579.0 441.139720559 131% => OK
Chars per words: 5.47322970639 5.12650576532 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.90534594407 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.72800848991 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 287.0 204.123752495 141% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.495682210708 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 976.5 705.55239521 138% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 4.96107784431 202% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 60.1596489754 57.8364921388 104% => OK
Chars per sentence: 137.782608696 119.503703932 115% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.1739130435 23.324526521 108% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.21739130435 5.70786347227 109% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 7.0 5.25449101796 133% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.219663665806 0.218282227539 101% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0733411153525 0.0743258471296 99% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0511149584842 0.0701772020484 73% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.147117351809 0.128457276422 115% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.026438723212 0.0628817314937 42% => 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: 16.9 14.3799401198 118% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 37.64 48.3550499002 78% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.2 12.197005988 116% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.74 12.5979740519 117% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.35 8.32208582834 112% => OK
difficult_words: 164.0 98.500998004 166% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => 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: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 580 350
No. of Characters: 3102 1500
No. of Different Words: 281 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.907 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.348 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.661 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 235 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 173 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 123 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 87 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.217 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.895 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.652 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.325 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.495 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.133 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5