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, Acme would benefit greatly by requiring all of our employees to take the Easy Read course."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The recommendation presents that the Acme Publishing Company will be benefited if its all employees receive Easy Read Speed-Reading Course as other companies' employees have taken this course and received some advantages in their job fields, including speed reading, and promotion. Stated in this way, the recommendation fails to take many pivotal factors into consideration for which no transparent evidence is provided. Therefore, the argument is fallacious and remains open for debate.
First of all, the personnel director assumes that Acme's employees need the course. What if they are already skilled? Perhaps, they were recruited based on that they are highly proficient in reading and gleaning information faster. And, another assumption is that the two mentioned successful stories are adequate to judge that all other employees who took the course were successful and received promotions; as a result, the course is considered beneficial. Maybe, the success rate is considerably low if compared with the number of employees enrolled. If either of the scenarios holds true, the recommendation made is untenable.
Furthermore, another presumption is that speed-reading is the only factor to get the promotion (as stated in the recommendation that one got promoted to vice president). Apart from this quality, other aspects, such as quality of time management, honesty, cooperation, dedication to jobs, and completion of daily tasks were taken into consideration; consequently, the employee got promoted. If this is what is occurring here, the argument remains obscure.
Finally, it is assumed that Acme company is capable of paying 500 dollars for each of its employees. If the company is meager in money and it has been failing to pay employees' salaries, the assumption does not hold water. Additionally, it assumes that Spruce City is near the Acme; thus, it will not have to spend traveling costs. What if the city is significantly far from the company, which may cost it a huge amount of money. It also did not mention for how long the course will be conducted and the time needed for traveling from the company to the city. Thus, the conclusion mentioned in the original argument is invalid.
In conclusion, although the argument, as it stands now, is flawed due to its several unwarranted assumptions. If the personnel director answers the questions above and offers more evidence (perhaps in the form of a systematic research study), it will be possible to fully assess and bolster the viability of the proposed recommendation to receive the course.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 408 350
No. of Characters: 2096 1500
No. of Different Words: 220 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.494 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.137 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.917 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 154 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 127 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 89 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 64 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.4 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.718 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.9 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.275 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.502 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.046 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, consequently, finally, first, furthermore, if, may, so, therefore, thus, apart from, in conclusion, such as, as a result, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 12.9520958084 46% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 38.0 55.5748502994 68% => OK
Nominalization: 23.0 16.3942115768 140% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2163.0 2260.96107784 96% => OK
No of words: 408.0 441.139720559 92% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.30147058824 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.49433085973 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.01748934948 2.78398813304 108% => OK
Unique words: 223.0 204.123752495 109% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.546568627451 0.468620217663 117% => OK
syllable_count: 669.6 705.55239521 95% => 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: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 65.5674271266 57.8364921388 113% => OK
Chars per sentence: 108.15 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.4 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.0 5.70786347227 123% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => 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: 0.321022977934 0.218282227539 147% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0695970714122 0.0743258471296 94% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0867043273407 0.0701772020484 124% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.1569760303 0.128457276422 122% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.107062924922 0.0628817314937 170% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.7 14.3799401198 95% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.46 12.5979740519 107% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.0 8.32208582834 108% => OK
difficult_words: 113.0 98.500998004 115% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 75.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.5 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.