The following is a recommendation from the personnel director to the president of Acme Publishing Company.
"Many other companies have recently stated that having their employees take the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course has greatly improved productivity. One graduate of the course was able to read a 500-page report in only two hours; another graduate rose from an assistant manager to vice president of the company in under a year. Obviously, the faster you can read, the more information you can absorb in a single workday. Moreover, Easy Read would cost Acme only $500 per employee—a small price to pay when you consider the benefits. Included in this fee is a three-week seminar in Spruce City and a lifelong subscription to the Easy Read newsletter. Clearly, to improve overall productivity, Acme should require all of our employees to take the Easy Read course."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The personnel director recommends to the president of Acme publishing company that all employees should take the Easy read course because it brings great benefits by paying relatively small price. Although the recommendation seems logical, there are several logical fallacies and misconstrue that the director neglected.
First, it is opaque mentioning the other companies that stated their employees has greatly improved productivity by taking the course. The other companies mentioned in the recommendation may be irrelevant to the publishing company. If the manufacturing companies, which main job is to make to manufacturing machines sustainable, stated such sentence, it would be unreliable because there is scarce relation between the manufacturing and publishing. Also, there are no standards confirming that the productivity has actually increased. Without knowing them, there is no way to verify how much the productivity has actually improved. To make the claim reliable, there should be data explaining which kinds of companies stated that and the precise principles measuring the productivity improvement.
Second, there are insufficient number of graduates of the course who got the benefit of it. The article showed only two graduates as an example, not a group of graduates saying their skills got better at the survey. Furthermore, it may have other factors that the graduates of the course reading such a thick report or getting promoted in such a speed. The examples may also attend another job specializing courses and they got the benefits from that courses. To validate the claim, the director should provide enough amount of data which shows relevant relation between the course and the efficiency of work.
Also, it is not shown that the relation between the velocity of reading and the amount of absorbed information is proportional. It may be true that when the person read faster, the one could read more information. However, reading the information and absorbing the information is different problem. If the one read too fast, the information may be understood superficially. To explain “obviously” as it mentioned, the director should provide verified research which shows reading reports in a rush doesn't harm profound understanding of the report.
Finally, the fee which is paid for the program may not be as cheep as the president thought. If the course is given one hour per week, there will be only three hours provided during the whole course. The other employees might have attend not a single courses but several courses continuously. In this case, the cost for improving productivity doubles, triples or even more. To provide the recommendation appropriate, the director should explain to the president that the three-week seminar is enough to improve the productivity.
In conclusion, the director should provide more squared data and explanation to make the claim acceptable.
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: 24 15
No. of Words: 456 350
No. of Characters: 2407 1500
No. of Different Words: 213 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.621 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.279 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.915 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 187 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 146 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 100 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 71 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.5 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.283 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.529 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.082 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 677, Rule ID: SHOULD_BE_DO[1]
Message: Did you mean ''?
...ake the claim reliable, there should be data explaining which kinds of companies sta...
^^^^
Line 7, column 499, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...h which shows reading reports in a rush doesnt harm profound understanding of the repo...
^^^^^^
Line 9, column 232, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Use past participle here: 'attended'.
Suggestion: attended
... course. The other employees might have attend not a single courses but several course...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, first, furthermore, however, if, may, second, so, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 38.0 55.5748502994 68% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2480.0 2260.96107784 110% => OK
No of words: 455.0 441.139720559 103% => OK
Chars per words: 5.45054945055 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.61852021839 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.02944531962 2.78398813304 109% => OK
Unique words: 222.0 204.123752495 109% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.487912087912 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 752.4 705.55239521 107% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 37.755771266 57.8364921388 65% => OK
Chars per sentence: 103.333333333 119.503703932 86% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.9583333333 23.324526521 81% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.875 5.70786347227 68% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 15.0 8.20758483034 183% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.372566984138 0.218282227539 171% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0959514205662 0.0743258471296 129% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.093191692102 0.0701772020484 133% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.17048814574 0.128457276422 133% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0931225504851 0.0628817314937 148% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.7 14.3799401198 95% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 44.75 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.33 12.5979740519 114% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.1 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 103.0 98.500998004 105% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.