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, Acme would benefit greatly by requiring all of our employees to take the Easy Read course."
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 recommendation from the personnel director to the president of Acme Publishing Company seems axiomatic. The personnel director refers to examples of other companies and graduates that supposedly benefited from the course. Also, the personnel director contends that Acme Publishing Company will receive similar benefits after requiring the course to all of the company's employees. However, the argument is unsubstantiated because of several reasons.
First, the personnel director claims that since many companies have benefited greatly from the program, Acme will do so as well. Nevertheless, the author cites no evidence to support the claim; in fact, the author is falsely equating the conditions of other companies and Acme. What the personnel director fails to consider is, however, the type of reading provided in the course might not be the type of readings Acme employees engage in their working lives, thus not benefiting from the course. Also, Acme is a publishing company, which means, it is highly likely that its employees might already are excellent readers. If so, employees will not gain much from the course.
Second, the personnel director asserts that the course was accounted for two individuals' accomplishments. Nonetheless, it is entirely possible that those two were already outstanding readers, and equipped with appropriate skills even before taking the course. The graduate who was able to read a 500-page report in two hours might have been able to do so even before enrolling the course. Additionally, the author contends that the second individual's promotion is attributed to the course; in actuality, this might not be the case. The individual's promotion would have been owing to other factors such as sales abilities, managing skills, and administration skills. It is unfair to argue that the promotion was highly because of the program. Therefore, the author needs to provide more evidence to support the argument.
Third supposition the personnel director has is that the benefits Acme will acquire from the course will outweigh the cost of of the course. The author, nevertheless, fails to cite any evidence to that. In fact, productivity and working efficiency might drop significantly during the 3-week course, which might override the benefits of the program. Thereby, the author needs to conduct accurate cost-benefit analysis in order to bolster his or her claim.
All in all, because of deficiency in evidence the personnel director provided, the suggested recommendation is at best suspect. To strengthen the assertion, the personnel director needs to submit evidences regarding the exact benefits Acme employees will receive from the course after conducting intense research about Acme company and past success stories from the reading course.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- not OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- not OK
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Let's analyze the structure of the statement and argue accordingly:
condition 1:
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. //your argument 2
condition 2:
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. //suppose there are 500 employees, it is still a big money: $500X500 = 250,000. and a three-week seminar may not work
conclusion:
Clearly, Acme would benefit greatly by requiring all of our employees to take the Easy Read course. //maybe only some of them need the course. not all of them.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 432 350
No. of Characters: 2303 1500
No. of Different Words: 198 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.559 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.331 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.801 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 183 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 144 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 104 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 66 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.636 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.24 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.773 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.348 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.521 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.076 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 354, Rule ID: ALL_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'all the'.
Suggestion: all the
... benefits after requiring the course to all of the companys employees. However, the argume...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 440, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'individuals'' or 'individual's'?
Suggestion: individuals'; individual's
...ly, the author contends that the second individuals promotion is attributed to the course; ...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 537, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'individuals'' or 'individual's'?
Suggestion: individuals'; individual's
...uality, this might not be the case. The individuals promotion would have been owing to othe...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 124, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a word
Suggestion: of
... from the course will outweigh the cost of of the course. The author, nevertheless, f...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, nevertheless, nonetheless, regarding, second, so, then, therefore, third, thus, well, in fact, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 58.0 55.5748502994 104% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2369.0 2260.96107784 105% => OK
No of words: 432.0 441.139720559 98% => OK
Chars per words: 5.4837962963 5.12650576532 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.55901411391 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.86371596483 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 206.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.476851851852 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 730.8 705.55239521 104% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Interrogative: 1.0 0.471057884232 212% => OK
Article: 17.0 8.76447105788 194% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.2352277056 57.8364921388 80% => OK
Chars per sentence: 107.681818182 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.6363636364 23.324526521 84% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.04545454545 5.70786347227 106% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
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: 0.302023242075 0.218282227539 138% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0899526615132 0.0743258471296 121% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0894472317147 0.0701772020484 127% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.186048199027 0.128457276422 145% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0962677177077 0.0628817314937 153% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.2 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.3550499002 90% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.5 12.5979740519 115% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.27 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 101.0 98.500998004 103% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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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.