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 writer of the argument recommended that the company of Acme should provide facilities for their employees to take the course of easy read because it can help them to improve their efficiency. However, this conclusion cannot be accepted as it is it rests on a number of premises all of which can be challenged in one way or another.
The first problem with the argument is that the writer assumes a number of companies stated their productivity increased after taking a speed-reading course. However, it is not mentioned which companies they are, may be their work does not relate to reading any reports or documents mainly. For example, the truck drivers of a transportation company do not need to read a lot during their work, so it cannot affect their productivity.
Another problem with the argument is that the writer thinks that the improvement of efficiency is completely due to the speed reading of the employees. Maybe there are new facilities in the company which can help them to improve their quality of work. For example, a newly stablished gym for employees in which they can do exercises during their break time can increase their productivity.
The third issue is that the writer made an assumption about the elevating a graduate to vice president from a lower position is related to easy-read courses. However, there is not any guarantee that everybody just through passing this course can improve their position in the company. Maybe that person got the upper level because of the way that he negotiate with their costumers and proper behavior with other colleagues.
To conclude, the writer's recommendation cannot be taken into correct as it was shown in the body paragraphs above, it depends on a number of assumptions each of which is questionable. The recommendation of passing the course of speed-reading for all the companies in order to improve the quality of their workers' activities can only be accepted if the weaknesses already referred to are all removed.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 2.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 13 15
No. of Words: 333 350
No. of Characters: 1631 1500
No. of Different Words: 158 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.272 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.898 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.79 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 118 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 93 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 56 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 42 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.615 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 4.764 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.615 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.373 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.633 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.068 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 18, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'writers'' or 'writer's'?
Suggestion: writers'; writer's
...h other colleagues. To conclude, the writers recommendation cannot be taken into cor...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 401, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...es already referred to are all removed.
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, however, if, may, so, third, for example
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 3.0 11.1786427146 27% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 34.0 28.8173652695 118% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1667.0 2260.96107784 74% => OK
No of words: 333.0 441.139720559 75% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.00600600601 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.27180144563 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.85825945719 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 163.0 204.123752495 80% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.489489489489 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 522.9 705.55239521 74% => 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: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 13.0 19.7664670659 66% => 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: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 29.5930985078 57.8364921388 51% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 128.230769231 119.503703932 107% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.6153846154 23.324526521 110% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.61538461538 5.70786347227 63% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => 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: 0.273544589965 0.218282227539 125% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.108873388296 0.0743258471296 146% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0750078142439 0.0701772020484 107% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.165592128861 0.128457276422 129% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0333736726269 0.0628817314937 53% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.0 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.07 12.5979740519 96% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.15 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 69.0 98.500998004 70% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 54.17 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.25 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.