The following is a letter from the parent of a private school student to the principal of that school:
Last year, Kensington Academy turned over management of its cafeteria to a private vendor, Swift Nutrition. This company serves low-fat, low-calorie meals that students do not find enjoyable – my son and several of his friends came home yesterday complaining about the lunch options. While the intent of hiring Swift may have been to cause students to eat healthier foods, the plan is just going to cause students to bring their own, less healthy lunches instead of eating cafeteria food. If Swift is not replaced with another vendor, there will be serious health consequences for Kensington students.
The author's letter that contains the complaint on the catering services of a particular company, to the school principal seem inept. Several assumptions and conclusions are made without proper evidences and thus, the letter becomes inherently flawed. Several loop holes and assumptions made should be addressed to conclude the facts. Without proper facts and evidences, the acceptance rate of the argument reduces.
On the first, the author is complaining that the Swift Nutrition would serve food with low calories and low fat that the children would not find it to be enjoyable. Here, what are the food that being catered by the Swift Nutrition food company is not stated. If this is stated, a bird-view calculation can be made that is the food really have low fat and low calories, and are they really making children disinterested to have food form that vendor?. Without this fact, concluding the statement that the children are not enjoying the food served by the company could not be accepted.
Secondly, the author is connoting the complaint made by her son, about the lunch options. Here too, what are the foods that are served during the lunch hours is not stated. Without this, the complaint on the lunch options does not make a sense. The author is also stating that if this continues, this would make the children bring their own lunches, that are unhealthy. In fact, the food that are low in calories and fat are the healthy foods. But, having not said the food options provided by the Swift Nutrition catering company, it would be very difficult to assert that the food is not enjoyable and are unhealthy.
The author is also stating that if this food catering company is not replaced in they near future, or it may cause serious health issues to the children. This assumption is futile, unless, the fact of the what are all the food options are provided to determine whether the food are healthy or not to end up with serious health issues.
Thus, in total, the author's claims though concerned about the children's health, the facts and statements provided in the letter to the principal makes it impotent to convince the reader. Still greater study has to be made to understand why the food is not enjoyable or is thought to be unhealthy before claiming the facts.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
sample:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/following-letter-p…
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 2.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 391 350
No. of Characters: 1846 1500
No. of Different Words: 159 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.447 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.721 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.391 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 129 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 93 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 65 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 38 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.722 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.301 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.556 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.352 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.579 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.1 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 433, Rule ID: FROM_FORM[4]
Message: Did you mean 'from'?
Suggestion: from
...ing children disinterested to have food form that vendor?. Without this fact, conclu...
^^^^
Line 9, column 188, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Still,
...kes it impotent to convince the reader. Still greater study has to be made to underst...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, if, may, really, second, secondly, so, still, thus, as to, in fact
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 34.0 19.6327345309 173% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 40.0 55.5748502994 72% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 16.3942115768 49% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1901.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 391.0 441.139720559 89% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.86189258312 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.44676510885 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.45755166391 2.78398813304 88% => OK
Unique words: 167.0 204.123752495 82% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.427109974425 0.468620217663 91% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 559.8 705.55239521 79% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.4 1.59920159681 88% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 40.6410058688 57.8364921388 70% => OK
Chars per sentence: 105.611111111 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.7222222222 23.324526521 93% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.66666666667 5.70786347227 82% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.136010482236 0.218282227539 62% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0512963409149 0.0743258471296 69% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0505573480715 0.0701772020484 72% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.07478960199 0.128457276422 58% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0480516593306 0.0628817314937 76% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.3 14.3799401198 86% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 67.08 48.3550499002 139% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.1 12.197005988 75% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.91 12.5979740519 87% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.71 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 75.0 98.500998004 76% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.