"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, to improve productivity, Acme should require all of our employees to take the Easy Read course."
The personnel director recommends all employees in the Acme Publishing Company should take the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course to improve productivity. However, several questions in the argument need to be addressed to make the claim more sufficient.
Citing two success stories from the course, the author claims that the class can really improve productivity. Nevertheless, how many employees take the course? People attending the class should be able to represent all employees in the company, whereas in the argument, lacking information about the number of employees taking the course and the number of successful cases, it is impossible to access the validity of the results. For example, if 2000 people go to the class but only 2 people significantly enhance their reading speed, the conclusion would be highly suspect.
Even if the number of people attending the course is extremely sufficient and over half people significantly strengthen the reading skill, the composition of the people in the class still needs to be assured. Nonetheless, we find no sign of such information for students’ background and have good reasons to doubt whether the class is representative enough to reflect the general effectiveness of itself. For instance, if the company only selected the employees with very high IQ level, the consequence deduced by the class would represent these specific people, not all employees in the company.
The author claims that one graduate of the course was able to read a 500-page report in only two hours. However, a correlation between taking the course and reading report fast does not necessarily infer a causal relation. It is entirely that there are some other important factors contributing to high reading speed. Perhaps he just scanned the report and then claimed he can read this less than two hours, but he did not fully understand the content in the report. Or perhaps he accepted good training when he was a child. So even he did not take the course, he still had the ability to read the 500-page in a short time. Therefore, any of these factors might lead to fast reading speed. Without ruling out all other possibilities, it is unfair to conclude that the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course is responsible for increasing reading speed.
In conclusion, the author needs to address the questions as above mentioned to strengthen the argument.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 2.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 387 350
No. of Characters: 1945 1500
No. of Different Words: 195 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.435 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.026 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.772 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 148 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 107 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 67 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 50 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.5 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.958 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.722 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.339 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.556 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.146 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 personnel director recommends all em...
^^^^
Line 2, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...sed to make the claim more sufficient. Citing two success stories from the cour...
^^^^
Line 3, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...he conclusion would be highly suspect. Even if the number of people attending t...
^^^^^
Line 4, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ple, not all employees in the company. The author claims that one graduate of t...
^^^^
Line 5, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ponsible for increasing reading speed. In conclusion, the author needs to addre...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, however, if, nevertheless, nonetheless, really, so, still, then, therefore, whereas, for example, for instance, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 5.0 13.6137724551 37% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 20.0 28.8173652695 69% => OK
Preposition: 44.0 55.5748502994 79% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1998.0 2260.96107784 88% => OK
No of words: 387.0 441.139720559 88% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.16279069767 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.43534841618 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.89334155058 2.78398813304 104% => OK
Unique words: 197.0 204.123752495 97% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.509043927649 0.468620217663 109% => OK
syllable_count: 599.4 705.55239521 85% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 56.2538613215 57.8364921388 97% => OK
Chars per sentence: 111.0 119.503703932 93% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.5 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.22222222222 5.70786347227 127% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.396927478427 0.218282227539 182% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.133384511261 0.0743258471296 179% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.125946333362 0.0701772020484 179% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.179661708728 0.128457276422 140% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.135548602639 0.0628817314937 216% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.6 14.3799401198 95% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 48.3550499002 121% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.65 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.15 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 85.0 98.500998004 86% => OK
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: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.