A recent study indicates that children living in the Himalayan mountain region in Nepal have lower levels of tooth decay than children living in suburban areas in the United States, despite the fact that people in the Himalayan mountain region in Nepal re

Essay topics:

A recent study indicates that children living in the Himalayan mountain region in Nepal have lower levels of tooth decay than children living in suburban areas in the United States, despite the fact that people in the Himalayan mountain region in Nepal receive little to no professional dental care, while people in suburban areas in the United States see a dentist an average of 1.25 times per year. Thus, regular dental care is not helpful in preventing tooth decay.

Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.

The argument postulates that dental care is not a helpful tool for preventing tooth decay. To validate this conclusion the author cites lower level of tooth decay among Himalayan children from mountain region. Though tooth decay may not be correlated with number of dental visits per year, the argument has several logical fallacies that prevent from agreeing with the arguer and require different explanation for the phenomenon.

To begin with, the true reason of tooth decay can be merely attributed to access to dental care, but more to education on dental health. If someone does not brush his teeth at least twice a day and, preferably, use dental floss, his or her teeth will inevitably decay; and visiting a dentist on a monthly basis will prevent cavities from developing further but won't ever be stopped. So, may be american suburbs do not educate their children on importance of dental hygine, hoping that any cavity will be fixed at clinic, while Himalayan parent are well aware that dentists are unavailable because of some reason (expensive, or too far, or unprofessional, etc) and prefer to prevent issue rather than fix it later.

Though dental education is important and could be a good explanation of the phenomenon, more plausible explanation, from my point of view, rests on the assumption that Himalayan children have a very different diet compared to that of american children. Quantity of sugar that average american child consumes every year significantly exceeds norm. Today, sugar is present almost in any food: sauces, milk, baby food, yogurt, cereal. Obviously, a child exposed to such an egregious heaven suffers from elevated tooth decay level and obesity. Now compare that to the diet of remote Himalayan regions where boons of capitalistic world are at least not that well distributed and, probably, not that easily affordable.

In conclusion, the author is right that dental care does not prevent from tooth decay. Other matters do so: such as dental hygiene and diet.

Votes
Average: 4.5 (3 votes)
Essay Categories

Comments

Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, if, may, so, well, while, at least, in conclusion, such as, to begin with

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 39.0 55.5748502994 70% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1675.0 2260.96107784 74% => OK
No of words: 327.0 441.139720559 74% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.12232415902 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.25242769721 4.56307096286 93% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.60231890932 2.78398813304 93% => OK
Unique words: 195.0 204.123752495 96% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.596330275229 0.468620217663 127% => OK
syllable_count: 526.5 705.55239521 75% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 13.0 19.7664670659 66% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 80.4091607722 57.8364921388 139% => OK
Chars per sentence: 128.846153846 119.503703932 108% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.1538461538 23.324526521 108% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.0 5.70786347227 105% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => 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: 0.159577768519 0.218282227539 73% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0647629910897 0.0743258471296 87% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0828775758793 0.0701772020484 118% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.101085469779 0.128457276422 79% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0578509588761 0.0628817314937 92% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.3 14.3799401198 106% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.71 12.5979740519 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.93 8.32208582834 107% => OK
difficult_words: 84.0 98.500998004 85% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?

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Rates: 54.17 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.25 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.

samples:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/recent-study-indic…

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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 2.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 10 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 9 2
No. of Sentences: 13 15
No. of Words: 328 350
No. of Characters: 1632 1500
No. of Different Words: 185 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.256 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.976 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.527 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 118 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 82 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 56 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 36 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.231 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.526 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.538 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.357 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.572 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.073 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5