The following is a petition to the city council of Centerville:
"Over the past three years, there has been a marked increase in cases of 'sidewalk rage,' similar to the irrational anger drivers experience on the road, but instead among sidewalk walkers. The result is an increase in assaults, property damage, and disruptions of normal pedestrian traffic. In order to address this growing problem, the council must ban cell phone use on sidewalks. Not only do people texting or using their phones slow down pedestrian traffic, but they are also more likely to walk into the road or bump into other walkers. Children are especially vulnerable because they are too short to be easily seen. Middletown passed such a ban and not only have they heard no complaints, but the reported incidents of sidewalk crime has gone down significantly."
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.
As the petition elucidates, sidewalk rage in Centerville indeed is a worrying problem which has lead to a lot of civilians being casualties to property damage, and assaults.This is now being addressed in the city council through the petition to ban the usage of cell phones will ease the situation following the lead of Middletown.
Petitions and actions implemented in one town might not exactly work the same way one would expect in another town as we are dealing with a different demographic, way of lifestyle, and the governing body. This form of social behaviour problems might infact arise because of the quality of life and atmosphere in Centerville. The argument clearly fails to elaborate and justify the irrational anger expressed by civilians except for pointing out the effect of mobile phones causing them to slow down pedestrian traffic and bump into one another.
The above argument must also leaves us wondering that there might be more than one reason how the situation diffused positively in Middletown. The petition makes a preposterous assumption that both the cities Centerville and Middletown have similar experience with crime rate and security. If infact Middletown was a safer city than Centerville is, the cell phone ban must have complemented the citizens safety in the street even more making the ban seem very effective.
The cell phone ban on sidewalks in Centerville does seem to be a very helpful suggestion to curb the increasing violence in the streets. But the petition presented above is primarily based on Middletowns success with the ban, where the assumptions and statements presented weaken their state in front of the city council and the solution clearly might not be as effective as they claim to be.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 9 15
No. of Words: 287 350
No. of Characters: 1439 1500
No. of Different Words: 163 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.116 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.014 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.742 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 101 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 83 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 63 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 46 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 31.889 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.308 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.444 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.394 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.67 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.142 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 174, Rule ID: SENTENCE_WHITESPACE
Message: Add a space between sentences
Suggestion: This
...alties to property damage, and assaults.This is now being addressed in the city coun...
^^^^
Line 5, column 144, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...tion diffused positively in Middletown. The petition makes a preposterous assumptio...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, if, so, except for
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 12.0 19.6327345309 61% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 4.0 13.6137724551 29% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 9.0 28.8173652695 31% => OK
Preposition: 39.0 55.5748502994 70% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1467.0 2260.96107784 65% => OK
No of words: 286.0 441.139720559 65% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.12937062937 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.11236361783 4.56307096286 90% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.8314015194 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 168.0 204.123752495 82% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.587412587413 0.468620217663 125% => OK
syllable_count: 465.3 705.55239521 66% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 9.0 19.7664670659 46% => 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: 31.0 22.8473053892 136% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 64.4517237268 57.8364921388 111% => OK
Chars per sentence: 163.0 119.503703932 136% => OK
Words per sentence: 31.7777777778 23.324526521 136% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.22222222222 5.70786347227 56% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => 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: 0.151309981297 0.218282227539 69% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0621692704919 0.0743258471296 84% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0563839921287 0.0701772020484 80% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.09460383526 0.128457276422 74% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0444427048048 0.0628817314937 71% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.6 14.3799401198 129% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.01 48.3550499002 83% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.4 12.197005988 126% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.07 12.5979740519 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.26 8.32208582834 111% => OK
difficult_words: 74.0 98.500998004 75% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 18.5 12.3882235529 149% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.4 11.1389221557 129% => OK
text_standard: 19.0 11.9071856287 160% => OK
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.