The following is an excerpt from a letter sent by the principal of Greenwood School to the parents of all incoming kindergartners.
"We have decided to institute a policy of all-day kindergarten, instead of half-day kindergarten, for all students at Greenwood School. All-day kindergarten will help all our students achieve at their highest levels. The classes will be 'tracked'; so that average students are together, but high-achieving and low-achieving students will be put together in classes. In this way, the high-achieving students will be able to help pull the low-achieving students up to their level, so that no student falls behind. The all-day kindergarten classes will cover the same material previously covered in the half-day kindergarten classes, but will go at a slower speed to accommodate learning differences. In addition, the students will receive extra instruction in music, art, and physical education. One of the greatest benefits of the plan, however, is that students will be in a structured environment for longer hours, reducing the numbers of hours that otherwise would be wasted at home or in day care."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The letter from the principal of Greenwood School (GS) states the decision of instituting an all-day kindergarten to replace the half-day kindergarten. This is based on several premises namely,
1) Students will achieve their highest levels through peer motivation and segregation.
2) Coverage of same course materials over longer duration, to address learning differences
3) Time for extra instruction in music, art and physical education.
4) Reduce wastage of time spent at home/ day-care.
Firstly, the letter assumes that students can achieve their "highest levels" by tracking and segregating students. Though high level students could help lift the low achieving students, it assumes that average level students can motivate themselves to do better. Moreover, the letter talks about kindergarten classes, where students are very young, hence assuming that their brains are capable of underatsnding peer motivation and the curriculum rigorous enough mandating introduction of such measures.
Furthermore, the course material to be covered is going to be the same, but taught at a slower pace to accommodate learning differences. This statement assumes that students are finding it difficult to cope up with the present pace. Also, it assumes that students who are comfortable with the present speed would have to slow their pace of learning or be engaged by some other activities. The letter also states introduction of music, art and physical education classes. Here, it is assumed that an all-day session will have enough time to accommodate these classes after stretching the time spent on usual coursework.
Finally, spending longer hours in an structured environment is said to be among the greatest benefits. This presumes that time spent at home or in day care is "wasted". The term "wastage" is not clearly mentioned in the letter, leading to various assumptions on it's definition. The time spent outside school could also be spent at co-curricular activities making such classes at school redundant.
To conclude, the letter is based on several assumptions on peer motivation, time management, curruiculum difficulty and "wastage" of time elsewhere to base the decision of supplanting the half-day kindergarten with an all-day one.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
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: 17 15
No. of Words: 346 350
No. of Characters: 1846 1500
No. of Different Words: 183 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.313 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.335 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.847 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 148 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 120 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 48 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.353 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.695 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.412 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.337 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.561 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.06 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 192, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...his is based on several premises namely, 1 Students will achieve their highest le...
^^^
Line 4, column 32, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...erences 3 Time for extra instruction in music, art and physical education. 4 Re...
^^
Line 11, column 35, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'a' instead of 'an' if the following word doesn't start with a vowel sound, e.g. 'a sentence', 'a university'
Suggestion: a
...k. Finally, spending longer hours in an structured environment is said to be am...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, firstly, furthermore, hence, if, moreover, so
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.6327345309 81% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 21.0 28.8173652695 73% => OK
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1953.0 2260.96107784 86% => OK
No of words: 346.0 441.139720559 78% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.64450867052 5.12650576532 110% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.31289638616 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.2374909301 2.78398813304 116% => OK
Unique words: 194.0 204.123752495 95% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.560693641618 0.468620217663 120% => OK
syllable_count: 596.7 705.55239521 85% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 48.8255846485 57.8364921388 84% => OK
Chars per sentence: 114.882352941 119.503703932 96% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.3529411765 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.23529411765 5.70786347227 74% => OK
Paragraphs: 9.0 5.15768463074 174% => Less paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.0 0.218282227539 0% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0 0.0743258471296 0% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0 0.0701772020484 0% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0 0.128457276422 0% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0 0.0628817314937 0% => 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: 15.3 14.3799401198 106% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 42.72 48.3550499002 88% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.43 12.5979740519 122% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.28 8.32208582834 112% => OK
difficult_words: 102.0 98.500998004 104% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 9.0 12.3882235529 73% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Maximum six paragraphs wanted.
It is not exactly right on the topic in the view of e-grader. Maybe there is a wrong essay topic.
Rates: 16.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 1.0 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.