"An innovative treatment has come to our attention that promises to significantly reduce absenteeism in our schools and workplaces. A study reports that in nearby East Meria, where fish consumption is very high, people visit the doctor only once or twice per year for the treatment of colds. Clearly, eating a substantial amount of fish can prevent colds. Since colds represent the most frequently given reason for absences from school and work, we recommend the daily use of Ichthaid—a nutritional supplement derived from fish oil—as a good way to prevent colds and lower absenteeism."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The author argues that daily consumption of Ichthaid is recommended to reduce absenteeism. However, this argument relies on several critical assumptions which are supported by insufficient and unpersuasive evidence.
To begin with, the author assumes that fish consumption is highly related to treatment of colds based on studies conducted in nearby East Meria where people consumes a lot of fish. According to the research, people in this region rarely visit doctor for curing colds. However, it is uncertain that eating fish is direct cause of low rate of people who got colds in this region, because there are possibilities that other variables are also related to this. For example, if East Meria’s annual temperature is not hospitable to virus or bacteria that causes colds, consuming fish is not able to be considered to sole determinant for the result of this study. Also, there is no data about the number of people who were subjects of the study. If the study is conducted for small number of people, and the number is not enough to have representativeness for the entire population, this research could not be considered reliable. Moreover, as the author missed present how long this test was taken to reach the results, there is a possibility that this result only represent short-term trend if researchers observed people less than one year. Therefore, the author should provide more detailed research data which can prove that the fish consumption is the only factor related to the number of people who got colds in near East Meria, how many people the researchers were observed and period of the study to strengthen his idea.
Furthermore, the author also presumes that use of Ichthaid could be helpful to prevent colds. However, the oil from fish which is the main composition of Ichthaid might not be effective to patients even if we assume that eating fish is truly helpful for treatment of colds. If the materials effective to suppress virus or bacteria which causes colds were lost during process of making oil, the Ichthaid could not be effective. Also, if there are special physical traits that people living in near East Meria, and this is a main reason that why fish was effective for the people in this region, this treatment might not be effective to people live in other areas. Accordingly, more information about what materials in fish helps to prevent colds, accounts for a possibility of loss of such materials, and more information about special traits of people living in near East Meria will make the author’s argument more plausible.
Even if all above assumptions that the author made above are true, use of Ichthaid could not be ultimate solution for reducing absenteeism because people may lie about their reason of absent. As colds are popular and commonplace disease, people could say they got colds to avoid long explanation for their real reasons of absent. Therefore, more detailed research on main reasons of absenteeism is required to make the author’s conclusion agreeable.
In sum, author didn’t present enough evidence and only showed limited information as pointed above. Accordingly, the author needs to reinforce his idea by presenting more evidence and improving it with more reliability.
Comments
e-rater score 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: 20 15
No. of Words: 533 350
No. of Characters: 2654 1500
No. of Different Words: 224 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.805 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.979 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.637 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 192 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 128 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 98 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 62 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.65 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.561 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.8 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.344 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.563 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.122 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
The author argues that daily consumption...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
accordingly, also, furthermore, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, therefore, for example, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 33.0 19.6327345309 168% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 20.0 13.6137724551 147% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 71.0 55.5748502994 128% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2725.0 2260.96107784 121% => OK
No of words: 532.0 441.139720559 121% => OK
Chars per words: 5.12218045113 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.80261649409 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.720746975 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 233.0 204.123752495 114% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.437969924812 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 845.1 705.55239521 120% => 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: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
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: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 58.8151978659 57.8364921388 102% => OK
Chars per sentence: 136.25 119.503703932 114% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.6 23.324526521 114% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.35 5.70786347227 94% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.154036287459 0.218282227539 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0540010301487 0.0743258471296 73% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0592640623323 0.0701772020484 84% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.073252673845 0.128457276422 57% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0523994502899 0.0628817314937 83% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.0 14.3799401198 111% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 45.09 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.71 12.5979740519 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.37 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 116.0 98.500998004 118% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => 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.