The following recommendation was made by the president and administrative staff of Grove College, a private institution, to the college's governing committee.
"We recommend that Grove College preserve its century-old tradition of all-female education rather than admit men into its programs. It is true that a majority of faculty members voted in favor of coeducation, arguing that it would encourage more students to apply to Grove. But 80 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. 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 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 president recommends that they uphold their century-old tradtion of all-female education rather than amending it to allow men into its programs. His recommendation is based on the results of a survey conducted by the student government as well as predilection of over half of the alumnae to continue all-female educaion. However, the president seems to base his argument on unwarrented assumptions which can render the argument flimsy.
Firstly, the president mentions that over 80 percent of the students in a survey supported all-female education rather coeducation. The president fallaciously assumes that 80 percent is a very high number and hence, take their opinion into consideration. However, this can be an unsubstantiated assumption, in as much as the president does not give the exact number of participants in the survey. It is possible that there are around 1000 students in the college and only 10 of them participated in that survery. In such a scenario, 80 percent would give 8 students which a paltry number given the strength of the collge. If this turns out to be true, then the presidents argument is significantly weakened.
Secondly, the president mentions that in another survey, over half of the alumnae supported all-female education. The president prematurely assumes the opinion of other half of the almunae does not count. If the president only considers the opinion of those almunae who repsondedly positively for all-female and ignores the opinion of the other half, he may run into to the trouble of losing financial support from the other half. If this turns out to be true, then the president's claim that they will have enough financial support from the alumnae will not hold water.
Finally, the president discounts the opinion of the majority of the faculty members by assuming that the students are better in making judicious decisions for themselves than the highly experienced facutly.
The majority of the faculty members are inclinced towards coeducatioin may be because they feel that such a system would succor overall development of both genders. In a classroom discussions, students get to listened to different perspecitves which the students would not have otherwise. If such is the intention of the faculty members for their proclivity for coeducation, then the president's recommendation would actually prove to be malevolent to the students in all-female classrooms.
All in all, the argument, as it stands, is unpursuasive as it rest on a series of substantiated assumptions such as - 80 percent of the students is a good number to continue all-female education, the financial support from the other half of almunae is not affected and last but not the least, faculty members are not prudent enough to make decisions for the students.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 6 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 18 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 448 350
No. of Characters: 2298 1500
No. of Different Words: 192 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.601 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.129 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.967 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 174 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 148 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 103 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 71 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.889 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.318 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.722 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.368 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.58 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.14 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 4, column 662, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'presidents'' or 'president's'?
Suggestion: presidents'; president's
... If this turns out to be true, then the presidents argument is significantly weakened. ...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 11, column 385, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'presidents'' or 'president's'?
Suggestion: presidents'; president's
...ir proclivity for coeducation, then the presidents recommendation would actually prove to ...
^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, finally, first, firstly, hence, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, well, such as, as well as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 62.0 55.5748502994 112% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2360.0 2260.96107784 104% => OK
No of words: 448.0 441.139720559 102% => OK
Chars per words: 5.26785714286 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.60065326758 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.03188643512 2.78398813304 109% => OK
Unique words: 197.0 204.123752495 97% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.439732142857 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 724.5 705.55239521 103% => 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: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 64.3420882548 57.8364921388 111% => OK
Chars per sentence: 131.111111111 119.503703932 110% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.8888888889 23.324526521 107% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.55555555556 5.70786347227 115% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.154403992753 0.218282227539 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0555190002276 0.0743258471296 75% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0584977318099 0.0701772020484 83% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0816328552402 0.128457276422 64% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0586745041486 0.0628817314937 93% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.8 14.3799401198 110% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.58 12.5979740519 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.21 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 96.0 98.500998004 97% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.