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 recommendation provided by the personnel director says that by subscribing to the easy read course the company's employees' productivity will go up. The director come up with this plan after getting information about two graduates and their improvement in productivity and by concluding that Acme will definitely get a return on investment.
Firstly, is a positive result of two graduates a clear cut demarcation for the success of this course.
In other words, can we be really sure that the product does increase the reading speed by only knowing about two people who successfully achieved the result? What about others who took the course? The first graduate who was able to read 500 words, maybe was able to read 450 before taking the course. Now that isn't a really big improvement. One can't comment on his progress until one knows about his speed before taking the test. The second graduate might be having additional skills that made this meteoric rise possible .There are many variables and not just productivity/reading speed that makes promotion, and that too a really big one, achievable.
Secondly, if Acme is going to spend 500 dollars on each of its employee, then it has to make sure whether the product will be benefitting for the company at large or not. The information of the benefits provided in the letter just mention about two graduates which isn't complete. A comprehensive study of the employees and their work has to be made to make a sound conclusion about who needs the product. The company has to be sure that the amount spent on the product should increase the productivity of the employees that they get much work done.
Lastly, keeping other variables constant, how does an increase in reading speed of employees benefit the company as a whole. The argument rests on the assumption that if employees finish their work faster then they'll get more work done, but what if company has limited amount of work. What will the employees who have done their work do?
These are the questions that the above proposal should ponder upon before making any action.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 358 350
No. of Characters: 1701 1500
No. of Different Words: 179 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.35 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.751 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.555 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 111 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 79 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 57 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 36 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.059 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.12 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.471 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.323 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.57 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.109 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 4, column 240, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... first graduate who was able to read 500 words, maybe was able to read 450 befor...
^^
Line 4, column 275, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...d 500 words, maybe was able to read 450 before taking the course. Now that isnt ...
^^
Line 4, column 312, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: isn't
...450 before taking the course. Now that isnt a really big improvement. One cant comm...
^^^^
Line 4, column 347, Rule ID: CANT[1]
Message: Did you mean 'can't' or 'cannot'?
Suggestion: can't; cannot
...that isnt a really big improvement. One cant comment on his progress until one know...
^^^^
Line 4, column 362, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...lly big improvement. One cant comment on his progress until one knows about his s...
^^
Line 4, column 468, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...est. The second graduate might be having additional skills that made this meteori...
^^
Line 4, column 525, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Don't put a space before the full stop
Suggestion: .
...ls that made this meteoric rise possible .There are many variables and not just pr...
^^
Line 4, column 527, Rule ID: SENTENCE_WHITESPACE
Message: Add a space between sentences
Suggestion: There
... that made this meteoric rise possible .There are many variables and not just product...
^^^^^
Line 6, column 41, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... Secondly, if Acme is going to spend 500 dollars on each of its employee, then it...
^^
Line 6, column 268, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: isn't
... just mention about two graduates which isnt complete. A comprehensive study of the ...
^^^^
Line 8, column 199, Rule ID: COMPARISONS_THEN[1]
Message: Did you mean 'faster than'?
Suggestion: faster than
...ion that if employees finish their work faster then theyll get more work done, but what if ...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 8, column 211, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: they'll
...employees finish their work faster then theyll get more work done, but what if company...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, if, lastly, may, really, second, secondly, so, then, as to, in other words
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 11.0 19.6327345309 56% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 46.0 55.5748502994 83% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1743.0 2260.96107784 77% => OK
No of words: 354.0 441.139720559 80% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.92372881356 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.33761313653 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.69089260232 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 186.0 204.123752495 91% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.525423728814 0.468620217663 112% => OK
syllable_count: 527.4 705.55239521 75% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.2383247467 57.8364921388 87% => OK
Chars per sentence: 102.529411765 119.503703932 86% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.8235294118 23.324526521 89% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.58823529412 5.70786347227 98% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 12.0 5.25449101796 228% => Less language errors wanted.
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.309395703256 0.218282227539 142% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0963304723661 0.0743258471296 130% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0799248649305 0.0701772020484 114% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.130831792632 0.128457276422 102% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.101028512522 0.0628817314937 161% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.2 14.3799401198 85% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 59.64 48.3550499002 123% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.26 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.3 8.32208582834 88% => OK
difficult_words: 60.0 98.500998004 61% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.