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.
The author argues that Acme should require their employees to take the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course to improve productivity. Although the author’s reasoning are fair, there are additional questions that they should address to make the argument more example. The author should take into consideration the supply and demand of the course and if Acme’s line of work would benefit from this course.
Firstly, the author mentions the price of the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course and how it it is “a small price to pay”; however, is it really? Is the Acme a small or big company? Depending on the answer to that question, the course could actually cost more and resulting in less productivity of the company. For example, if the company has few employees, the cost of the course would result in the company owing more money than earning. This could result in employees’ wages to decrease. Knowing that they are earning less money, employees’ productivity could decrease.
Furthermore, the author discusses two graduates of the Easy Read Speed-Reading course and were successful. However, the author should question what type of field the graduates are working in. For example, the graduate who became the vice president. The graduate could have earned the vice president position due to other reasons, such as, creating ideas that benefited the company or went beyond the expectations of their job description. The employee could be productive without the need of speed reading.
The author also mentions a graduate who can read 500 pages in two hours. This is impressive and supports the author’s argument - if it fits the line of work of Acme. For example, having the ability to read multiple reports in a short amount of time would be productive when trying to find the important points of each report.
The author argues that productivity would increase at Acme if enrolled in the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course. Although the author has some strong supporting evidence, they fail to answer the question of the supply and demand of the course and the line of work that Acme partakes in would benefit with fast readers. As it stands now, the author’s argument is unsubstantial and is heavily flawed.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ??? 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: 364 350
No. of Characters: 1787 1500
No. of Different Words: 164 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.368 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.909 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.587 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 134 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 90 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 62 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 34 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.2 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.593 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.347 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.547 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.114 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 86, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a word
Suggestion: it
... Easy Read Speed-Reading Course and how it it is 'a small price to pay'; ho...
^^^^^
Line 11, column 1, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...ve without the need of speed reading. The author also mentions a graduate who can...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, first, firstly, furthermore, however, if, really, so, for example, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 20.0 28.8173652695 69% => OK
Preposition: 41.0 55.5748502994 74% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1892.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 364.0 441.139720559 83% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.1978021978 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.36792674256 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.86305433543 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 173.0 204.123752495 85% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.475274725275 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 562.5 705.55239521 80% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 14.0 8.76447105788 160% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
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: 43.9525596524 57.8364921388 76% => OK
Chars per sentence: 94.6 119.503703932 79% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.2 23.324526521 78% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.5 5.70786347227 79% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => 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: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.277008348919 0.218282227539 127% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.091735923367 0.0743258471296 123% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0890268836659 0.0701772020484 127% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.164342940563 0.128457276422 128% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0399512858487 0.0628817314937 64% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.2 14.3799401198 85% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 61.67 48.3550499002 128% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.1 12.197005988 75% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.88 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.83 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 76.0 98.500998004 77% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => 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.