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 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 advice 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 advice.
The author, the personal director to the president of Acme Publishing Company(ACP), is arguing for all employees to take Easy Read Speed-Reading Course to improve their productivity given that the course increased the productivity of employees of other companies that took the course. This is a very cost intesive decision , $500 per employee times all the employees of the company, and as such a number of questions should be answered before making this decision.
Central to the author's argument is that the productivity of employees of other companies improved only, or at least mostly, due to the course. The final outcome evinced could have been the result of a number of factors. Better management, better work environment, or even personal training by the employees would probably lead to better productivity. There also may have been some dramatic change in their working procedure which could yield the observed result. With so many possibilities it is almost impossible to say for sure wheather the prime reason for increased productivity. Moreover the author cited two examples of employees in other companies whose productivity supposedly increased after fininshing the course. The set of two people is just too small to draw the general concusion that productivity increases after taking part in the course; and on top of that applying the same to the specific case of ACP is even more far-fetched. Therefore, given all the possibilities, it is necessary to know definitively wheather the course improves productivity and wheather it will do the same for employees of ACP.
The author also suggests that $500 is 'a small price to pay' for the benefits of higher productivity. However, considering the large monetary investment that will be needed for this project, it behooves the company to make a quantitative comparison of the total cost to the perceived benefit before putting any money for this project.
The author recommended that every employee should be required to take this course; but will the course significantly benefit productivity of every employee that takes it? Someone working in accounts section or perhaps in customer care don't generally peruse 500 page reports. Reading forms only a minor part of their assigned task and definitively not the limiting factor in their productivity; as such, increase in reading speed will only affect their performance minimially. Hence such employees do not need to be signed up for a course to increase their reading speed.
There is also another possible outcome of the reading course that the author overlooks, and that is the effect this will have on employees in the long run. Increased reading speed might come at th price of increased strain on the eyes and the mind (i.e. stress). Over years the cumulative effect of this might stress related illness and eye disorders, which would in turn lead to increased sick leave and overall drop in productivity. Furthermore, as these effects would take years to manifest this would not be visisble in the employees of other companies, because they themselves applied it only recently.
So overall, all the effects of the reading course should be properly studied before going forward with the costly investment.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 523 350
No. of Characters: 2653 1500
No. of Different Words: 243 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.782 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.073 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.755 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 197 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 148 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 109 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 68 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.905 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.982 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.619 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.314 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.545 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.054 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 321, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma, but not before the comma
Suggestion: ,
...e. This is a very cost intesive decision , 00 per employee times all the employees...
^^
Line 3, column 16, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...making this decision. Central to the authors argument is that the productivity of em...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 585, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Moreover,
...rime reason for increased productivity. Moreover the author cited two examples of employ...
^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 236, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...nts section or perhaps in customer care dont generally peruse 500 page reports. Read...
^^^^
Line 7, column 477, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...ly affect their performance minimially. Hence such employees do not need to be signed...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, furthermore, hence, however, if, look, may, moreover, so, therefore, at least, on top of that
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 67.0 55.5748502994 121% => OK
Nominalization: 7.0 16.3942115768 43% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2712.0 2260.96107784 120% => OK
No of words: 522.0 441.139720559 118% => OK
Chars per words: 5.19540229885 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.77988695657 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.84650786688 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 255.0 204.123752495 125% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.488505747126 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 838.8 705.55239521 119% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 6.0 1.67365269461 358% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.5125206184 57.8364921388 87% => OK
Chars per sentence: 129.142857143 119.503703932 108% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.8571428571 23.324526521 107% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.95238095238 5.70786347227 87% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 16.0 8.20758483034 195% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.302923173257 0.218282227539 139% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0920080778982 0.0743258471296 124% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.100824524577 0.0701772020484 144% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.157069998788 0.128457276422 122% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.103274240997 0.0628817314937 164% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.18 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.4 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 118.0 98.500998004 120% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.0 12.3882235529 145% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => 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.