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.
This personal director concludes that in order to increase the productivity of the company they should obligatory made every employee pass the Easy Read (ER) course. The author bases its conclusion on a graduate being able to read a report enormously fast and another graduate which has been promoted in short time. This argument suffers from several reasoning flaws, which together render the recommendation to be unconvincing.
First, the author cites the fact that one graduate have been promoted after a year from an assistant to vice president. However, any number of other facts might explain this event. For instance, perhaps the employee might have been sharp and assiduous, which in my opinion is more effective than fast reading. Without considering and ruling out alternative reasons, the conclusion that the fast reading is the only key to the employee's promotion is unjustified.
Next, the author asserts that a student was able to complete a 500 pages report in just two hours. My common senses tell me that it is impossible to do so. Even if the graduate did, he would not know the context and detail of the report. In fact the author points the premise that reading speed and amount of information is in direct relation. Nevertheless, you might have read more but in grasping an idea another important factor is depth of the subject which you understand.
Finally, it is has been claimed that this obligatory course would definitely improve productivity. This evidence would lend support to the argument only if we are informed those companies using this course are similar to the Acme Publishing Company (APC) in different respects. It is entirely possible that the employee of APC are older than other companies. Also, perhaps the employee of those companies might have been selected in a compatitive procedure and thereby more intelligent and sharp. Lacking evidence, this evidence cannot convince me that the more productivity would be resulted.
In a nutshell, the argument is an unpersuasive one that relies on a serise of unproven assumptions—about other reasons for the specific promotion, the premise that reading fast and understanding are proportional and weak similarity between new generations and old generations. To strengthen the argument, the author should provide better examples of those who have been effected and also clear evidence that the ACP is typical, in different aspects, to other companies which have employed the course for their employees.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Sentence: Also, perhaps the employee of those companies might have been selected in a compatitive procedure and thereby more intelligent and sharp.
Error: compatitive Suggestion: competitive
Sentence: In a nutshell, the argument is an unpersuasive one that relies on a serise of unproven assumptions?about other reasons for the specific promotion, the premise that reading fast and understanding are proportional and weak similarity between new generations and old generations.
Error: serise Suggestion: series
--------------------
argument 1 -- not OK
argument 2 -- not OK
argument 3 -- not OK
--------------------
Let's analyze the structure of the statement and argue accordingly:
condition 1:
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. //the samples are too small. only two samples
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, still it is a big money: 500X$500 = $250,000
conclusion:
Clearly, to improve overall productivity, Acme should require all of our employees to take the Easy Read course. //maybe only some of them need to take the course
---------------------
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 402 350
No. of Characters: 2043 1500
No. of Different Words: 212 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.478 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.082 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.704 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 149 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 121 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 86 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 47 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.158 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.292 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.632 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.302 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.302 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.077 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 426, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'employees'' or 'employee's'?
Suggestion: employees'; employee's
...the fast reading is the only key to the employees promotion is unjustified. Next, the au...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, however, if, nevertheless, so, then, for instance, in fact, in short, in my opinion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 36.0 28.8173652695 125% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 42.0 55.5748502994 76% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2091.0 2260.96107784 92% => OK
No of words: 401.0 441.139720559 91% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.2144638404 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.47492842339 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.86243013177 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 213.0 204.123752495 104% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.531172069825 0.468620217663 113% => OK
syllable_count: 654.3 705.55239521 93% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 55.3887795271 57.8364921388 96% => OK
Chars per sentence: 110.052631579 119.503703932 92% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.1052631579 23.324526521 90% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.78947368421 5.70786347227 101% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => 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: 0.23968609996 0.218282227539 110% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0664626847161 0.0743258471296 89% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0438780139629 0.0701772020484 63% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.128967346819 0.128457276422 100% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0242921793406 0.0628817314937 39% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.7 14.3799401198 95% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.94 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.69 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 102.0 98.500998004 104% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.