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 g

Essay topics:

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 this memo, stating experiences of other companies that have their employees take the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course, the author argues that Acme Publishing Company should require all of their employees to take the Easy Read Course to improve productivity. Although this claim seems to be convincing at first glance, some flaws and lack of evidence lead me to question the validity of this argument.

First of all, the author assumes that the experiences of other companies could be applied to Acme Publishing company directly. However, in many cases, each company has its characteristics according to the professional field, kind of industry, and working style. Therefore, even if the Speed-Reading Course affected improving productivity for some companies, it will not have a good effect on other companies. To bolster his claim, the author should present more information about the similarity between his company and other companies.

Second, the author argues that the cost of $500 per employee is not expensive, so all of their employees should take the course. However, if the number of employees in Acme Publishing Company is very high, the cost can be a significant amount. In this case, participating in the course for whole employees may be a waste of large budget since some employees could already have similar skills about reading or other employees might not require such kind of skills for working. In addition, although the fee of $500 includes a lifelong subscription to the Easy Read newsletter, it may not be beneficial for some employees that they have no interest in the contents.

Third, the author asserts that the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course will make their employees more productive. However, he does not provide enough evidence that joining the course enhances the productivity of their company. For instance, he shows some examples of the effect of joining the course such as one employee could read a 500-page report only in two hours and another employee promoted to vice president of his company in under a year. But I disagree that these cases show the effect of participating in the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course since these only two cases cannot represent the whole benefit of the course.

In addition, fast reading a report is just one of many skills that show someone's productivity for work. Even if the employee can read a report much faster than before, he may not remember the whole contents or understand the exact meaning of the report. Likely, another case of the employee promoted to the vice president might be a specific and unique example since many companies do not have many vice presidents positions in their company. These flaws make this argument weaken inevitably. To strengthen his claim, the author has to provide more successive cases that can show the effect of the Easy Read Speed-Reading Courses.

In conclusion, many flaws and limited evidence make this argument unpersuasive, so the author's advice is not a good decision at this time. To validate his opinion, the author needs to provide more information such as more examples of successful employees, the working environment of his company, and reasonable evidence of improved productivity by joining the Speed-Reading course.

Votes
Average: 7.3 (2 votes)
Essay Categories

Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 11, column 88, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...make this argument unpersuasive, so the authors advice is not a good decision at this t...
^^^^^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, may, second, so, then, therefore, third, as to, for instance, in addition, in conclusion, kind of, such as, first of all, in many cases

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 10.0 19.6327345309 51% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 41.0 28.8173652695 142% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 65.0 55.5748502994 117% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2727.0 2260.96107784 121% => OK
No of words: 527.0 441.139720559 119% => OK
Chars per words: 5.17457305503 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.79129216042 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.83183420886 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 215.0 204.123752495 105% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.407969639469 0.468620217663 87% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 845.1 705.55239521 120% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 9.0 4.22255489022 213% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.8040118401 57.8364921388 88% => OK
Chars per sentence: 129.857142857 119.503703932 109% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.0952380952 23.324526521 108% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.61904761905 5.70786347227 133% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.420979108959 0.218282227539 193% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.136283295748 0.0743258471296 183% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.110721190586 0.0701772020484 158% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.249678706892 0.128457276422 194% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0919939438698 0.0628817314937 146% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 14.3799401198 108% => 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: 13.0 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.9 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 101.0 98.500998004 103% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => 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: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.

Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 6 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 527 350
No. of Characters: 2660 1500
No. of Different Words: 209 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.791 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.047 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.751 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 194 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 147 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 104 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 64 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.095 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.479 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.762 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.346 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.572 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.111 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5