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 prompt states an assertion for a personnel director that allowing their employees to complete the Easy Read course will turn out beneficial for the Acme Publishing Company. But, this assertion incorporates many underlying assumptions with need to be substantiated with evidence to hold any water.
Firstly, the personnel director states that many companies have provided positive feedback regarding the Speed-Reading Course in increasing the productivity of the employees. But, if the Speed-Reading Course if beneficial for some companies, it does not mean it would be beneficial for Acme Publishing as well. These companies might be different from Acme Publishing Company in terms of content, culture and skillset required for the job. The diversity of the publishing content would be an important factor in determining the usefulness of course. For instance, at a Legal Publishing company would require a more meticulous and comprehensive reading compared to a publishing company working in the field of sports or fashion. Thus, the Speed-Reading course might turn out harmful, instead of conducive. Therefore, the personnel director should provide evidence regarding the relevant field of the companies who have undertaken the course for an effective comparison.
Secondly, apart from the excluding the diversity among companies, the personnel director quotes the achievements of few employees at different firms who undertook Speed-Reading Course. But, there is no proof provided regarding the authenticity of these claims. And, even if these claims are true, they might not be common among all the employees, or might just be an anomaly or personal achievements. Apart for this, personnel director quoted the rise of an assistant manager to vice president, but there might be difference in corporate hierarchies among the companies. For one it might take few years to become a Vice Presidents, on the contrary decades at some other firm. Therefore, the personnel director should corroborate his or her quotations with evidences regarding the authenticity and uniformity of the achievements.
Thirdly, the personnel director argues that $500 per employees would be a small amount considering the benefits. But, this assertion does not take into account the number of employees working at Acme Publishing Company. For a firm with small number of employees the amount might not be huge, but for firm with large number of employees it would really high. Therefore, the personnel director should take into consideration the strength of the company while making an assertion regarding the affordability.
Conclusively, the personnel director, while promoting the Easy Read Speed Reading Course, takes into account a lot of assumptions which should be validated with evidence.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 424 350
No. of Characters: 2304 1500
No. of Different Words: 189 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.538 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.434 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.99 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 176 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 145 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 120 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 92 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.2 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 4.739 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.9 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.345 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.545 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.099 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, if, really, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, third, thirdly, thus, well, while, apart from, for instance, of course, on the contrary
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 12.0 19.6327345309 61% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 17.0 28.8173652695 59% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2365.0 2260.96107784 105% => OK
No of words: 424.0 441.139720559 96% => OK
Chars per words: 5.57783018868 5.12650576532 109% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.53775939005 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.06506425039 2.78398813304 110% => OK
Unique words: 194.0 204.123752495 95% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.457547169811 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 724.5 705.55239521 103% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 32.5856947141 57.8364921388 56% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 118.25 119.503703932 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.2 23.324526521 91% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.5 5.70786347227 149% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 1.0 6.88822355289 15% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.338270578151 0.218282227539 155% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.1144125254 0.0743258471296 154% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0915293744067 0.0701772020484 130% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.198020964216 0.128457276422 154% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0854237366641 0.0628817314937 136% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 41.7 48.3550499002 86% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.08 12.5979740519 120% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.14 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 93.0 98.500998004 94% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => 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.