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."
In the argument, the personnel director recommends the president of Acme company to make all of its employees take the Speed-reading course for greater productivity. He thinks taking the course will help Acme to gain profit because other companies have reported the course to be beneficial. However, the director's suggestion is based on some unwarranted assumptions, which are rife with wholes and needed further clarification to make the director's point more persuasive.
First of all, It may be true that many companies were benefitted after taking the speed-reading course. But what if these companies are totally different from Acme. Maybe the other companies are such kinds of companies that actually require an extensive amount of reading (like newspaper company or publishing house) so taking the speed reading course helped them a lot, whereas Acme is a manufacturing
company where skills of the workers are much needed than their reading ability. If this is the case, then taking the speed reading course will not work for Acme as it did for other companies.
secondly, The cost of taking the course is considered low by the director. If the cost for only one employee, then it may seem a good purchase. But we don't know anything about the number of employees in the company. Maybe there are thousands of employees, spending $500 dollar for each of them will cost a lot for the company. Moreover, the course is a three-week-long course. That means employees will not be able to work full hours during those three weeks. Taking the course may actually cost way greater than what it is supposed to bring as profit.
Finally, the director recommends all the employees to take the course. We have no data about what kind of work employees do at Acme and what faction of works requires them to have speed reading capability. Maybe only 10% of the total employees actually require reading capabilities while others do tasks that are not related to reading at all. In that case, making the course compulsory for every employee would be nothing but mere wastage of time and money
To make the director's recommendation more valid and viable, he needs to provide more information about the employee's skills, what kind of jobs they are required to do, and what fraction of the employees actually need a speed-reading course. He also should keep in mind how much it would cost and what the profit might be. If these points are clarified only then the director's recommendation to the President might hold water.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 423 350
No. of Characters: 2048 1500
No. of Different Words: 205 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.535 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.842 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.662 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 137 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 99 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 70 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 50 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.227 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.862 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.773 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.33 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.558 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.137 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 305, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'directors'' or 'director's'?
Suggestion: directors'; director's
...e course to be beneficial. However, the directors suggestion is based on some unwarranted...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 1, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: Company
... lot, whereas Acme is a manufacturing company where skills of the workers are much ne...
^^^^^^^
Line 13, column 1, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: Secondly
...cme as it did for other companies. secondly, The cost of taking the course is consi...
^^^^^^^^
Line 13, column 152, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...hen it may seem a good purchase. But we dont know anything about the number of emplo...
^^^^
Line 13, column 269, Rule ID: CD_NN[1]
Message: Possible agreement error. The noun 'dollar' seems to be countable, so consider using: 'dollars'.
Suggestion: dollars
...are thousands of employees, spending 00 dollar for each of them will cost a lot for th...
^^^^^^
Line 17, column 458, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...thing but mere wastage of time and money To make the directors recommendation mor...
^^^^^^^
Line 21, column 13, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'directors'' or 'director's'?
Suggestion: directors'; director's
...age of time and money To make the directors recommendation more valid and viable, h...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 21, column 323, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” 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.
...ould cost and what the profit might be. If these points are clarified only then th...
^^
Line 21, column 367, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'directors'' or 'director's'?
Suggestion: directors'; director's
...hese points are clarified only then the directors recommendation to the President might h...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, first, however, if, may, moreover, second, secondly, so, then, whereas, while, kind of, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 45.0 55.5748502994 81% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 16.3942115768 49% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2114.0 2260.96107784 94% => OK
No of words: 422.0 441.139720559 96% => OK
Chars per words: 5.00947867299 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.53239876712 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.70490753743 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 205.0 204.123752495 100% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.485781990521 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 639.9 705.55239521 91% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 79.1014538425 57.8364921388 137% => OK
Chars per sentence: 105.7 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.1 23.324526521 90% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.5 5.70786347227 114% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 9.0 5.25449101796 171% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.297687442791 0.218282227539 136% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0968542527209 0.0743258471296 130% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.069582499846 0.0701772020484 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.168515589764 0.128457276422 131% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0624468038753 0.0628817314937 99% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.7 14.3799401198 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 48.3550499002 121% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.78 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.3 8.32208582834 88% => OK
difficult_words: 70.0 98.500998004 71% => More difficult words wanted.
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?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.