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 to president of Acme Publishing company suggests that all the employees must take the Easy Read Speed Reading Course to enhance their productivity based on several claims of people benefitting from the course and proposing that the course cost per person is a small amount for the benefits employees and company will get. Although the claim of speaker of Acme company sounds apt, three questions must be answered to fully justify advice provided.
Firstly, are the companies stating to benefit from the speed reading course similar to Acme Publishing Company? That is, can we compare the aforementioned companies to Acme Publishing directly in a one-to-one relationship? There is a possibility that a company that enhanced its productivity after taking the course could be a news reporting company where employees are to read text and present on live TV which requires high speed reading capabilities. Or it could be possible that a company might have a lot of employees from non-English speaking nations who have to directly interact with customers and might need fluent English speaking skill. However, the same might not apply to Acme Publishing Company. More information on the similarities between companies stating their productivity increase and Acme company have to be laid out to strengthen the claim.
Furthermore, what is the accuracy of presented data about the graduates of the mentioned course? They could be dubious claims from the speed reading company to lure customers into registering for their course. Even if the data is correct, under what circumstances was the data collected and what percent of people registering for the course benefitted out of it needs to be answered. There is a possibility that the person reading 500-pages in 2 hours was already as fast since we aren’t made aware of his or her reading speed before taking the course. Also, no details of the graduate who rose was assistant manager to vice president in a year are provided. Candidate might have been overdue a promotion or the company’s structure might be such that there are no posts between the two mentioned. The course providers must present further details of the graduates to justify their data.
Finally, does spending $500 per person on all the employees of Acme Publishing Company actually justify the investment cost? It is likely that Acme company has thousands of employees and the productivity increase leads to no profit increase or makes an insignificant impact since the personnel director to president hasn’t presented what productivity increase of employees brings to the company itself. It should be noted that the cost per person isn’t just the mentioned $500 per person but also the three week seminar in Spruce city has to be accounted for. It maybe possible that the seminar is too far from Acme company’s base location and the round trip cost may be extravagant. A break-even report must be submitted by the personnel director to completely analyse the cost to benefit ratio for the company.
Until the questions asked above are not answered, the argument remains flawed. The personnel director to president of Ace Publishing Company will have to provide more evidence for justifying the Easy Read Speed Reading Course being mandated for all the employees. Company can not make such a big decision to ask all their employees to take an expensive course without justifying the cost incurred to the company and the time spent by their employees to take the same.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 13 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 10 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 577 350
No. of Characters: 2890 1500
No. of Different Words: 252 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.901 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.009 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.707 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 213 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 176 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 116 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 81 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.087 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.858 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.348 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.327 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.517 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.085 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 557, 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.
...in Spruce city has to be accounted for. It maybe possible that the seminar is too ...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, first, firstly, furthermore, however, if, may, so, then, as to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 29.0 19.6327345309 148% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 74.0 55.5748502994 133% => OK
Nominalization: 7.0 16.3942115768 43% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2949.0 2260.96107784 130% => OK
No of words: 574.0 441.139720559 130% => OK
Chars per words: 5.13763066202 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.89472135074 4.56307096286 107% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.76049955266 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 253.0 204.123752495 124% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.440766550523 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 917.1 705.55239521 130% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => 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: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 64.7509406111 57.8364921388 112% => OK
Chars per sentence: 128.217391304 119.503703932 107% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.9565217391 23.324526521 107% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.0 5.70786347227 70% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => 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: 12.0 4.67664670659 257% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.458861160321 0.218282227539 210% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.143461889874 0.0743258471296 193% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.118688542852 0.0701772020484 169% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.301090262286 0.128457276422 234% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.103977721613 0.0628817314937 165% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.3 14.3799401198 106% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.83 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.94 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 113.0 98.500998004 115% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.