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.
In the above recommendation made by the personnel director, he mentions the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course. The author tells about the improvement other companies are experiencing after enrolling their employees for the course. The author tries to convince by giving certain examples and propose the president of Acme Publishing Company enroll all its employees for this course. Though the author has used an effective way of giving real-life examples to prove his point, tons of assumptions and questionable statements make his argument weak.
Firstly, the author tells that many companies took the course and have been experiencing a great improvement in productivity. There are many possible questionnaires that can be raised on this statement. The details of the survey that the author is deciding to conclude that many companies took courses are not mentioned. The company type is not mentioned which may make it possible, for the company not to be a publishing company. Further, they also have not given any statistics about employees who took the course and got benefited. Thus, due to en-numerous questions arising we cannot directly accept the author's argument.
While trying to prove the above statement the author adopts the technique of providing examples. First, he tells about a graduate who was able to read a 500-page report in only two hours. Though this is a very good skill to acquire, many questions can arise on the same one. The author is making an unjustified assumption that productivity increases when an employee can read more pages in less time. But there can be many questions that can be asked. Whether the reader read consciously? Is he capable of reading any kind of material or only of a specific domain? Is the company really benefited by more reading? Is there only reading the factor that is responsible for the growth in productivity of company? Before answering these questions it is impossible to accept the claim of the author.
In addition to the above example, the author tells us about a graduate who rose from an assistant manager to vice president of the company in under a year. Though this is really impressive growth for an individual, relating it to taking courses is inappropriate. The most important thing we are likely to ask is the improvement of the individual is only due to enrolling in the course? There is no other factor responsible for his growth such as education, skills, hard work, eligibility, or requirement of the company? Also, whether the employee ever used the skills acquired from the course in the work? This really changes one mind to accept the author's statement based on the given example.
Finally, the only advice the author must be given is to get more detailed statistics about the beneficiaries of the course and the course structure itself to convince others. Can also adopt other more effective methodologies other than giving examples.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 8 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 28 15
No. of Words: 481 350
No. of Characters: 2390 1500
No. of Different Words: 219 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.683 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.969 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.753 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 176 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 122 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 94 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 66 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.179 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.606 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.571 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.289 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.289 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.095 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 608, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...s arising we cannot directly accept the authors argument. While trying to prove the ab...
^^^^^^^
Line 2, column 626, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “While” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...t directly accept the authors argument. While trying to prove the above statement the...
^^^^^^
Line 3, column 614, 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.
...mpany really benefited by more reading? Is there only reading the factor that is r...
^^
Line 3, column 710, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “Before” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
... the growth in productivity of company? Before answering these questions it is impossi...
^^^^^^
Line 4, column 630, Rule ID: ADMIT_ENJOY_VB[1]
Message: This verb is used with the gerund form: 'mind accepting'.
Suggestion: mind accepting
...se in the work? This really changes one mind to accept the authors statement based on the give...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 4, column 649, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...s really changes one mind to accept the authors statement based on the given example. ...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, firstly, if, may, really, so, thus, while, in addition, kind of, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 58.0 55.5748502994 104% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2440.0 2260.96107784 108% => OK
No of words: 481.0 441.139720559 109% => OK
Chars per words: 5.07276507277 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.68313059816 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.82603150542 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 226.0 204.123752495 111% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.469854469854 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 775.8 705.55239521 110% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 28.0 19.7664670659 142% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 22.8473053892 74% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 33.0470250907 57.8364921388 57% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 87.1428571429 119.503703932 73% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.1785714286 23.324526521 74% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.53571428571 5.70786347227 62% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 6.0 5.25449101796 114% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 15.0 8.20758483034 183% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 11.0 4.67664670659 235% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.322153106505 0.218282227539 148% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.086860723225 0.0743258471296 117% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0706651185524 0.0701772020484 101% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.170705159988 0.128457276422 133% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0640128781641 0.0628817314937 102% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.0 14.3799401198 76% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 54.22 48.3550499002 112% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.83 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.8 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 101.0 98.500998004 103% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.8 11.1389221557 79% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.