The following is a letter that recently appeared in the Oak City Gazette, a local newspaper.
"The primary function of the Committee for a Better Oak City is to advise the city government on how to make the best use of the city's limited budget. However, at some of our recent meetings we failed to make important decisions because of the foolish objections raised by committee members who are not even residents of Oak City. People who work in Oak City but who live elsewhere cannot fully understand the business and politics of the city. After all, only Oak City residents pay city taxes, and therefore only residents understand how that money could best be used to improve the city. We recommend, then, that the Committee for a Better Oak City vote to restrict its membership to city residents only. We predict that, without the interference of non-residents, the committee will be able to make Oak City a better place in which to live and work."
The recommendation to exclude non-residents from the Committee for a Better Oak City rests on the assumption that being a resident is a prerequisite for a more accurate understating of the city's business and politics, and thus for better decision-making. However, the author did not address several important questions that must be addressed to make the recommendation valid.
First, the author seems to assume that merely working in Oak City is insufficient to have a good understanding of matters at hand. If, on the contrary, most of the Committee's decisions are directly related to the working-place issues, such as public facilities used by workers, the morning traffics in the entrance to the city or some regulations regarding the working force, the exclusion of non-residents working in Oak city will be a dubious, unfair decision. The author has to provide more information regarding the issues dealt with by the Committee.
Second, even if the committee is primarily concerned with inner problems, it may nevertheless be a mistake to exclude non-residents, who, by the dint of their more objective point of view, may contribute to a more deliberate decision-making. Indeed, people often tend to become too emotional when dealing with affairs directly affecting them, which happens more often on the local level. To support his view, the author should thus bring evidence that non-residents indeed raise irrelevant arguments and tend to reject helpful plans and decisions.
Finally, the actual duties of the Committee for a Better Oak City remain somewhat unclear. If the committee's function is merely advisory, and real decision-making rests somewhere else, excluding non-residents will probably not have any substantial effect, apart from irking those excluded committee members and impairing the City's public relations. The scope of the Committee's responsibility is thus another question the author has to address.
To sum up, the author must bring additional evidence to corroborate his recommendation: he should refer to the issues the Committee is dealing with and to its actual political mandate. He would also have to bring evidence in support of the view that non-residents have negative effect on the Committee's work. Otherwise, the recommendation would remain unpersuasive, if not potentially deleterious.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 6 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 360 350
No. of Characters: 1929 1500
No. of Different Words: 190 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.356 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.358 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.189 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 148 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 112 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 84 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 63 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.714 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.634 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.929 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.385 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.632 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.149 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, however, if, may, nevertheless, regarding, second, so, thus, apart from, as to, such as, on the contrary, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 11.0 19.6327345309 56% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 14.0 28.8173652695 49% => OK
Preposition: 48.0 55.5748502994 86% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1978.0 2260.96107784 87% => OK
No of words: 360.0 441.139720559 82% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.49444444444 5.12650576532 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.35587717469 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.24769148781 2.78398813304 117% => OK
Unique words: 191.0 204.123752495 94% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.530555555556 0.468620217663 113% => OK
syllable_count: 620.1 705.55239521 88% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 74.3791994184 57.8364921388 129% => OK
Chars per sentence: 141.285714286 119.503703932 118% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.7142857143 23.324526521 110% => OK
Discourse Markers: 10.1428571429 5.70786347227 178% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.224251965164 0.218282227539 103% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0802118326493 0.0743258471296 108% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0973410118153 0.0701772020484 139% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.136952177551 0.128457276422 107% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0966896890911 0.0628817314937 154% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.3 14.3799401198 120% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 37.64 48.3550499002 78% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.2 12.197005988 116% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.86 12.5979740519 118% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.35 8.32208582834 112% => OK
difficult_words: 102.0 98.500998004 104% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 15.0 12.3882235529 121% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.