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 author concludes that keeping the college all female will improve morale among students and convince alumnae to keep supporting the college financially. The author basis it on the claim that 80% of the students wanted the college to remain all female and half of the alumnae also wanted the same. The argument may look convincing at first glance. But some questions need to be answered to make the argument valid.
Firstly, are the 20% students who are not part of the survey also support the recommendation of college remaining an all female college? For instance, all the 20% students want the college to be coeducation. Then the survey would not be considered legit. Moreover, the 20% students could be intentionally left out due to their disagreement. The survey should be fair for the claim to hold true. If the survey is not conducted fairly, the argument will be weakened.
Secondly, are the questions of the survey unbiased? The questions should be related to the coeducation as well as all female college. If out of 10 questions 8 are only asking about all female, the survey will be biased towards the all female education. The questions should ask about the preference of students.
Thirdly, are all the alumnae included in the survey? It may be the case that some alumnae students are against this recommendation. Moreover, the alumnae surveyed may be biased to all female. Moreover, it is not mentioned the time of graduation of alumnai. The situation at that time may be different. Maybe,at that time the environment was not safe for females. This would again lead to an unfair survey.
Clearly, the argument as it stands now is flawed. It can be strengthened by conducting a fair survey that consists of reasonable questions and includes all students concerned. If all the questions above are answered, the argument will be valid.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 313 350
No. of Characters: 1494 1500
No. of Different Words: 136 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.206 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.773 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.635 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 114 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 81 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 58 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 31 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 13.042 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.556 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.708 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.312 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.312 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.098 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 302, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...lf of the alumnae also wanted the same. The argument may look convincing at first g...
^^^
Line 4, column 59, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...e alumnae included in the survey? It may be the case that some alumnae students a...
^^
Line 4, column 193, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Two successive sentences begin with the same adverb. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...e surveyed may be biased to all female. Moreover, it is not mentioned the time of gradua...
^^^^^^^^
Line 4, column 308, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma
Suggestion: , at
...ion at that time may be different. Maybe,at that time the environment was not safe ...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, if, look, may, moreover, second, secondly, so, then, third, thirdly, well, for instance, as well as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 4.0 11.1786427146 36% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 14.0 28.8173652695 49% => OK
Preposition: 32.0 55.5748502994 58% => More preposition wanted.
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1544.0 2260.96107784 68% => OK
No of words: 312.0 441.139720559 71% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.94871794872 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.20279927342 4.56307096286 92% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.75834011154 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 142.0 204.123752495 70% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.455128205128 0.468620217663 97% => OK
syllable_count: 473.4 705.55239521 67% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 13.0 22.8473053892 57% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 33.1027178726 57.8364921388 57% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 64.3333333333 119.503703932 54% => More chars_per_sentence wanted.
Words per sentence: 13.0 23.324526521 56% => More words per sentence wanted.
Discourse Markers: 5.25 5.70786347227 92% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
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: 0.126190066056 0.218282227539 58% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0392506859488 0.0743258471296 53% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0637093343455 0.0701772020484 91% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0778145705093 0.128457276422 61% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.050723331143 0.0628817314937 81% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 8.4 14.3799401198 58% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 66.74 48.3550499002 138% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 7.2 12.197005988 59% => Flesch kincaid grade is low.
coleman_liau_index: 10.54 12.5979740519 84% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.67 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 67.0 98.500998004 68% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 7.5 12.3882235529 61% => OK
gunning_fog: 7.2 11.1389221557 65% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.