The following recommendation was made by the president and administrative staff of Grove College, a private institution, to the college's governing committee.
"Recently, there have been discussions about ending Grove College's century-old tradition of all-female education by admitting male students into our programs. At a recent faculty meeting, a majority of faculty members voted in favor of coeducation, arguing that it would encourage more students to apply to Grove. However, Grove students, both past and present, are against the idea of coeducation. Eighty percent of the students responding to a survey conducted by the student government wanted the school to remain all female, and over half of the alumnae who answered a separate survey also opposed coeducation. Therefore, we recommend maintaining Grove College's tradition of all-female education. We predict that keeping the college all-female will improve morale among students and convince alumnae to keep supporting the college financially." Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The argument claims that the surveys show that by maintaining all-female tradition, the Grove college will have more morale students and also its alumnae will continue its financial support to the college. Stated in this way the argument manipulates facts and conveys a distorted view of facts, uses poor reasoning and fails to substantiate verifiability of the surveys. The conclusion of this argument relies on results and assumptions for which there is no clear evidence. Hence, there are some questions that should be answered in order to make a more convincing conclusion.
The first question arises here that what percent of students contributed to the survey? The passage avers that since 80 percent of students who responded the survey were opposed to co-education program, continuing all-female tradition will result in improving students' morale. This statement is a stretch since the author did not provide any detail information regarding the proportion of respondents to to the total number of students. In fact, maybe only 10 percent of students contributed to the survey and 80 percent of them were proponents of the tradition. This means that probably most of the students are either opposed to the tradition or not contributed to the survey. The argument would have been convincing if the author clearly had provided information about the proportion of students responding to the survey to the total number of students.
the second question we should ask is that what percent of the total alumnae members answered to the survey's questions? The writer claims that because the majority of alumnae responding to the survey were advocates of the tradition, maintaining this tradition would guarantee alumnae's financial support. However, this conclusion is flawed since the author did not present any evidence about what proportion of alumnae's members contributed to the survey. If only one person responded that survey, the results are not reliable. Therefore, based on a such unconvincing survey, the college can not be sure to have alumnae supports in the future.
The final question is that whether by continuing the all-female tradition all faculty members will not abandon the school? The argument says that although most of the faculty members were proponents of co-education program, the college should maintain the tradition jut because of the survey's results. In contrast, what happened if faculty members opposing to the all-female program give up the school even if the students and alumnae are proponents of the tradition? To make the prediction more reliable, the author must provide convincing evidence given whether the faculty prefer to remain in school.
In conclusion, according to the above-mentioned reasons, the argument is unjustifiable and full of unproven facts. To strengthen the conclusion, the author should demonstrate more details regarding the way of sampling and also he should provide evidence about the level of faculty's commitment to teach in the school unless maintaining the all-female tradition.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 477 350
No. of Characters: 2532 1500
No. of Different Words: 185 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.673 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.308 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.816 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 210 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 167 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 116 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 75 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.85 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.138 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.367 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.367 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.154 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 401, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a word
Suggestion: to
...regarding the proportion of respondents to to the total number of students. In fact, ...
^^^^^
Line 3, column 1, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: The
...urvey to the total number of students. the second question we should ask is that w...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, hence, however, if, may, regarding, second, so, then, therefore, in conclusion, in contrast, in fact
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 69.0 55.5748502994 124% => OK
Nominalization: 33.0 16.3942115768 201% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2574.0 2260.96107784 114% => OK
No of words: 477.0 441.139720559 108% => OK
Chars per words: 5.39622641509 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.67336384929 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.8732220251 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 201.0 204.123752495 98% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.421383647799 0.468620217663 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 787.5 705.55239521 112% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 16.0 8.76447105788 183% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 41.9303493309 57.8364921388 72% => OK
Chars per sentence: 122.571428571 119.503703932 103% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.7142857143 23.324526521 97% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.61904761905 5.70786347227 98% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.092376225286 0.218282227539 42% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0307056588846 0.0743258471296 41% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0390710932006 0.0701772020484 56% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0561896709969 0.128457276422 44% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0218360342092 0.0628817314937 35% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.4 14.3799401198 107% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.69 48.3550499002 84% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.1 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.34 12.5979740519 114% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.27 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 107.0 98.500998004 109% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => 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.