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 personnel director of Acme Publishing Company recommended the president that all the employees should take the Easy Read course to improve productivity. However, the personnel director needs to answer the following questions to strengthen his claim.
One graduate of the course showed that he is able to finish a 500-page report within 2 hours. However, we do not have information of the report. Do we know the content of the 500-page report? Let’s say the report is full with graphs and tables, it would not be particularly impressive to speed read this report. If, perhaps, the report was truly difficult to read, do we know if the course graduate had fully understand the content of the report and is able to use it accordingly? He could have just glance through the pages and not understand a thing in the report. It is hard to know whether if the course had improve productive for the graduate if we do not have these questions answered.
In another case where the graduate rose to vice president from assistant manager within a year. Do we know the structure of the company he is working at? Perhaps the company has many vice presidents and it takes on average only couple months to become a vice president. For example, a startup can have less than 10 employees includes CEO, CFO, CTO, manager...etc. It is hard to say whether it would be a difficult process to rise to vice president without the knowledge of the company itself. Hence, the personnel director needs to answer some questions of the company before we can judge the productivity of the other graduate.
Last, the personnel director need to answer the question: do we really need to require “all” the employee to take the speed reading course? For position such as manager assistant, sure. A manager assistant needs to read through a large amount of files in a short time in order to report them to the manager. However, what about the security guard in the front door? Or, perhaps, the cleaning lady for the bathroom? Both of these jobs do not concern much reading skill. It is clear that speed-reading for them are not going to increase the productivity in their job. Hence, we know that perhaps not all the employees need to take the Easy Read course.
In conclusion, the personnel director of Acme needs to answer the above questions to strengthen his argument.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
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: 23 15
No. of Words: 407 350
No. of Characters: 1883 1500
No. of Different Words: 182 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.492 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.627 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.532 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 133 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 99 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 63 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.696 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.743 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.478 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.316 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.519 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.201 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ng questions to strengthen his claim. One graduate of the course showed that h...
^^^^^
Line 2, column 420, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[2]
Message: Possible agreement error -- use past participle here: 'understood'.
Suggestion: understood
...e know if the course graduate had fully understand the content of the report and is able t...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 2, column 623, Rule ID: HAD_VBP[1]
Message: Possible agreement error -- use past participle here: 'improved'.
Suggestion: improved
... hard to know whether if the course had improve productive for the graduate if we do no...
^^^^^^^
Line 2, column 623, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Use past participle here: 'improved'.
Suggestion: improved
... hard to know whether if the course had improve productive for the graduate if we do no...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...do not have these questions answered. In another case where the graduate rose ...
^^^^^
Line 4, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...e productivity of the other graduate. Last, the personnel director need to ans...
^^^^^
Line 5, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...es need to take the Easy Read course. In conclusion, the personnel director of...
^^^^^
Line 6, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...questions to strengthen his argument.
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
accordingly, hence, however, if, really, so, then, for example, in conclusion, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 11.0 19.6327345309 56% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 4.0 11.1786427146 36% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 5.0 13.6137724551 37% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 55.0 55.5748502994 99% => OK
Nominalization: 4.0 16.3942115768 24% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1957.0 2260.96107784 87% => OK
No of words: 406.0 441.139720559 92% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.82019704433 5.12650576532 94% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.48881294772 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.70431348267 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 184.0 204.123752495 90% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.453201970443 0.468620217663 97% => OK
syllable_count: 602.1 705.55239521 85% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 16.0 22.8473053892 70% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 36.2485392426 57.8364921388 63% => OK
Chars per sentence: 81.5416666667 119.503703932 68% => OK
Words per sentence: 16.9166666667 23.324526521 73% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.58333333333 5.70786347227 63% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 8.0 5.25449101796 152% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 13.0 4.67664670659 278% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.32300122089 0.218282227539 148% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0891873237325 0.0743258471296 120% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0936344988886 0.0701772020484 133% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.19569203206 0.128457276422 152% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.107999117985 0.0628817314937 172% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 9.7 14.3799401198 67% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 63.7 48.3550499002 132% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 8.4 12.197005988 69% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.38 12.5979740519 82% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 6.88 8.32208582834 83% => OK
difficult_words: 63.0 98.500998004 64% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 6.5 12.3882235529 52% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 8.4 11.1389221557 75% => OK
text_standard: 7.0 11.9071856287 59% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.