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 fails to provide evidence about whether all of the employees would benefit from the course. The author cites two individuals as an example, but two as a sample size is too small to be generalized. In fact, those two successful people might have already been bright people even before taking the course, thus learning little to nothing from the course. In that case, taking the Easy Read Speed-Readin program contributed little to their excellence, if not waste of time. Moreover, even if those two individuals were greatly aided by the reading program, such reading ability might not be helpful to every employee of Acme company. While some employees are heavily engaged in reading materials, some other employees might not engage in reading during their everyday working life; those employees might be more involved in computers or printing machines. Therefore, the author's recommendation that all employees will benefit from the reading program is dubious with the given evidence.
Second, the personnel director false equates the conditions of many other companies with the conditions of Acme Publishing Company. It is entirely possible that for other firms, speed is the most important factor in working, and minor mistakes are considered negligible. However, accuracy may be far more integral than punctuality for Acme company since the materials the firm deals with are impacted more greatly by even small mistakes. Also, for other companies, spending company money on individual employees may not be a big of a deal, but it could be a huge burden for Acme company. Without effectively ruling out every possible variables, the author cannot assume that conditions of other companies will be similar to conditions of Acme Publishing Company. Thereby, the personnel director need to provide evidence showing that same will apply to Acme Company in order to bolster the claim.
Third evidence the personnel director is required to provide is if benefits from the reading course will outweigh the cost. $500 is a lot of money especially if multiplied by a big number. Nevertheless, there is no exhaustive investigation on cost and benefit. In fact, purchasing faster printing machine might be more conducive to increasing efficiency with minimal cost. Furthermore, even if it turns out that benefit overrides the cost, the author needs to consider turn-over rate of the company; if the company's turn-over rate is high, taking the program will only help competing companies after employees' resignation. Thus, more evidence is needed to manifest that revenue will outweigh expenditure to buttress the argument.
All in all, because of aforementioned reasons, the personnel director's recommendation is not convincing. To strengthen the assertion, the personel director should give more evidence based on detailed observation and investigation.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Sentence: To strengthen the assertion, the personel director should give more evidence based on detailed observation and investigation.
Error: personel Suggestion: personal
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argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 25 15
No. of Words: 513 350
No. of Characters: 2756 1500
No. of Different Words: 234 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.759 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.372 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.812 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 218 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 186 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 128 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 82 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.52 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.706 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.72 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.302 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.5 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.075 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 3, column 71, Rule ID: ALL_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'all the'.
Suggestion: all the
...fails to provide evidence about whether all of the employees would benefit from the course...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 898, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...rs or printing machines. Therefore, the authors recommendation that all employees will ...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 573, Rule ID: ADVISE_VBG[5]
Message: The verb 'help' is used with infinitive: 'to compete' or 'compete'.
Suggestion: to compete; compete
...high, taking the program will only help competing companies after employees resignation. ...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, furthermore, however, if, may, moreover, nevertheless, second, so, then, therefore, third, thus, while, in fact
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => OK
Pronoun: 17.0 28.8173652695 59% => OK
Preposition: 69.0 55.5748502994 124% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2824.0 2260.96107784 125% => OK
No of words: 513.0 441.139720559 116% => OK
Chars per words: 5.50487329435 5.12650576532 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.75914943092 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.88435138598 2.78398813304 104% => OK
Unique words: 246.0 204.123752495 121% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.479532163743 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 896.4 705.55239521 127% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Interrogative: 0.0 0.471057884232 0% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 41.6775047238 57.8364921388 72% => OK
Chars per sentence: 112.96 119.503703932 95% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.52 23.324526521 88% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.16 5.70786347227 90% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.348055007405 0.218282227539 159% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0971568903817 0.0743258471296 131% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0787255589017 0.0701772020484 112% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.180988862171 0.128457276422 141% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0804373571382 0.0628817314937 128% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.7 14.3799401198 102% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 42.72 48.3550499002 88% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.62 12.5979740519 116% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.63 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 130.0 98.500998004 132% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => 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.