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 argument makes some unwarranted assumptions in its assertion that the Easy Read course should be taken by all employees of Acme Publishing Company.
Firstly, the personnel director mentioned a person who was able to read an enormous report for a couple of hours. Here the quantity is taken as a performance indicator, but to read fast does not always mean to read perceptive and careful. Eventually, to assess the results of courses some quality measurements should be carried out. For example, if that employee would perform a good understanding of the text or would be able to retell its main idea, it could be stated that Speed-Reading Course had improved his productivity indeed.
Secondly, the example with an assistant manager is also unconvincing cause no other conditions of his career rise are mentioned. To prove the usefulness of the reading course one should find out whether other courses were taken by that manager. Nonetheless, even the argument would present such information, the link between speed reading and achieving higher career positions is obscure. Obvious, that a lot of other professional skills are required to be a good vice president.
Finally, the personnel director mentions all employees not considering that everyone has own mental and physical possibilities. Furthermore, there are a lot of factors like age or education degree which also should be taken into account. So, spreading the success of the particular persons on the rest of the employees is unfounded.
Summing up the above, it is obvious that the director has several flaws in giving a piece of advice. Here, some of the questions were discussed that answering them can help to evaluate the effectiveness of the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course.
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: 14 15
No. of Words: 283 350
No. of Characters: 1431 1500
No. of Different Words: 171 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.102 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.057 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.853 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 108 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 84 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 56 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.214 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 4.616 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.571 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.329 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.596 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.043 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 108, Rule ID: SOME_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'some'.
Suggestion: some
...laws in giving a piece of advice. Here, some of the questions were discussed that answering...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, firstly, furthermore, if, nonetheless, second, secondly, so, for example, of course
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 15.0 28.8173652695 52% => OK
Preposition: 35.0 55.5748502994 63% => OK
Nominalization: 6.0 16.3942115768 37% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1475.0 2260.96107784 65% => OK
No of words: 283.0 441.139720559 64% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.21201413428 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.10153676581 4.56307096286 90% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.9442157526 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 172.0 204.123752495 84% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.60777385159 0.468620217663 130% => OK
syllable_count: 457.2 705.55239521 65% => 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: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 28.4296482208 57.8364921388 49% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 105.357142857 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.2142857143 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.85714285714 5.70786347227 138% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => 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: 0.249110926415 0.218282227539 114% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0795050094004 0.0743258471296 107% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.057008893547 0.0701772020484 81% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.140111008992 0.128457276422 109% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0479664389407 0.0628817314937 76% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.2 14.3799401198 92% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.94 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.15 8.32208582834 110% => OK
difficult_words: 81.0 98.500998004 82% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
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.