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.
In the recommendation, the personnel director suggests that all the employees should take the Easy Read course for there are so many benefits.
He takes a graduate of the course for example, the member of the course is able to read a 500-page report in only two hours. However, what’s the content of the report? It’s likely that most of the pages are tables and pictures, and it’s also likely that the report is written by high school students, obviously easier for readers to understand. Even though the report is hard to read, how can we check that the graduate really completely comprehend the article rather than finish reading? If he skips the content he cannot figure out and only choose part of the information he had known, then reading a 500-page report isn’t difficult for everyone.
He also mentions another graduate taking the speed reading course is promoted from an assistant manager to vice president. What’s the background of the graduate? If he just married the daughter of the CEO, then it’s easy for him to get this high position without mastering in any special skills. Nevertheless, how’s the size of her company? There are more and more small companies thriving in every industry, and it’s possible that the company consists of 5 people. Under this case, the boss may want to boost the morale by announcing the promotion periodically, then the result isn’t highly correlated to the course.
Even though the course is proved to be effective, is it reasonable to require all the employees to take this course? Take securities for instance, the daily tasks for them it’s not related to reading ability but safety so this requirement isn’t logical. How about other employees? Do they need to read long articles like hundred pages? Or just the email which is much shorter than paper. In addition, it’s possible that mastering in the learning process is complicated and also time-consuming. Everyone pays attention to the class, but it’s not necessary that they can make a good use of the skill on their daily work.
To sum up, before requiring all the employees to take the speed reading course in order to maximize the profit, it still leaves many consideration.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- not OK
argument 2 -- not OK
argument 3 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 2.0 out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 374 350
No. of Characters: 1765 1500
No. of Different Words: 208 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.398 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.719 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.498 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 127 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 86 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 60 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 33 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.7 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.143 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.7 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.287 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.488 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.13 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 8, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... use of the skill on their daily work. To sum up, before requiring all the empl...
^^^
Line 9, column 129, Rule ID: MANY_NN[1]
Message: Possible agreement error. The noun consideration seems to be countable; consider using: 'many considerations'.
Suggestion: many considerations
...to maximize the profit, it still leaves many consideration.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, however, if, may, nevertheless, really, so, still, then, for example, for instance, in addition, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 12.0 19.6327345309 61% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 12.9520958084 46% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 44.0 55.5748502994 79% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1889.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 371.0 441.139720559 84% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.09164420485 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.38877662729 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.74392736669 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 206.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.55525606469 0.468620217663 118% => OK
syllable_count: 579.6 705.55239521 82% => 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: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 46.5273038118 57.8364921388 80% => OK
Chars per sentence: 94.45 119.503703932 79% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.55 23.324526521 80% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.85 5.70786347227 102% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.255386069712 0.218282227539 117% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0820216482761 0.0743258471296 110% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.059596668319 0.0701772020484 85% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.172748738896 0.128457276422 134% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0484069708996 0.0628817314937 77% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.8 14.3799401198 82% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 53.21 48.3550499002 110% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.24 12.5979740519 97% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.19 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 86.0 98.500998004 87% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 75.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.5 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.