The following is a letter to the editor of the Waymarsh Times."Traffic here in Waymarsh is becoming a problem. Although just three years ago a state traffic survey showed that the typical driving commuter took 20 minutes to get to work, the commute now ta

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The following is a letter to the editor of the Waymarsh Times.

"Traffic here in Waymarsh is becoming a problem. Although just three years ago a state traffic survey showed that the typical driving commuter took 20 minutes to get to work, the commute now takes closer to 40 minutes, according to the survey just completed. Members of the town council already have suggested more road building to address the problem, but as well as being expensive, the new construction will surely disrupt some of our residential neighborhoods. It would be better to follow the example of the nearby city of Garville. Last year Garville implemented a policy that rewards people who share rides to work, giving them coupons for free gas. Pollution levels in Garville have dropped since the policy was implemented, and people from Garville tell me that commuting times have fallen considerably. There is no reason why a policy like Garville's shouldn't work equally well in Waymarsh."

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 originator of the letter to the editor of the Waymarsh Times recommends implementing policy which has supposedly demonstrated positive results in the neighboring city. This step should reduce significantly commuting times. This conclusion is buttressed by evidence which ought to be carefully scrutinized in order to give a comprehensive estimation of the soundness of the argument.

To begin with, we are given evidence that a recent survey has displayed that time which spent by an average driving commuter to get to work has doubled from 20 minutes to 40. The writer tends to assert that this alteration is a sign of traffic problems, at the same time, some unstated changes might take place between these two studies which have considerably impacted on the results; for instance, some of the city's roads and highways have underwent maintenance and thus they are partly closed, moreover, the quality of road's surface may deteriorate dramatically and thus commuters have to drive slower than used to be. Additionally to it, perhaps some other changes took place in Waymarsh, for instance, manufacturing facilities and business offices which used to be situated in the heart of the town have been removed on the outskirts of the city and thus people have to spend more time driving. In other words, the writer has failed to prove that Waymarsh has traffic troubles.

The second evidence which we have is that nearby city of Garville has fulfilled policy which tails reduction of level of pollution and amount of time spent in commuting. However, the possibility exists that author's attribution of the success to the policy is mistaken. Probably other actions led to it, for example, Garville's council may dramatically improve public transport or pass laws which make driving a car inconvenient or/and costly. Therefore the policy may not be the real cause to the enhancement.

Moreover, the two cities may differ dramatically from each other as well as reasons of traffic problems. Thus actions, which tackle Garville’s problems, may not address the troubles of Waymarsh. For example, Waymarsh may have narrow roads full of holes and cracks and insufficient infrastructure with broken traffic lights and absence of road signs, on the contrary, Garville perhaps has perfect highways with modern infrastructure. These circumstances require different approach to combat them and consequently blind repetition of neighboring policy may not bring expected results.

In conclusion, the arguer avers that Waymarsh has significant traffic problems but he does not manage to prove their existence, moreover, the author's belief that Garville and Waymarch problems similar to each other is unwarranted and thus fulfillment of the policy may not tackle Waymarsh’s problems.

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Average: 8 (2 votes)
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Comments

argument 1 -- OK

argument 2 -- OK

argument 3 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 438 350
No. of Characters: 2291 1500
No. of Different Words: 227 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.575 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.231 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.832 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 176 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 135 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 97 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 55 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.375 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 16.336 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.812 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.349 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.583 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.126 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5