Several years ago, Groveton College adopted an honor code, which calls for students to agree not to cheat in their academic endeavors and to notify a faculty member if they suspect that others have cheated. Groveton's honor code replaced a system in which teachers closely monitored students. Under that system, teachers reported an average of thirty cases of cheating per year. The honor code has proven far more successful: in the first year it was in place, students reported twenty-one cases of cheating; five years later, this figure had dropped to fourteen. Moreover, in a recent survey, a majority of Groveton students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without. Such evidence suggests that all colleges and universities should adopt honor codes similar to Groveton's. This change is sure to result in a dramatic decline in cheating among college students.,
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
In the above statement, the author asserts that the implementation of honor code system will diminish the number of cheating among all college and universities. While supporting the argument, however, the author makes numerous assumptions which cannot be taken for granted. Thus, the argument remains largely unconvincing without further evidence to verify unjustified assumptions.
Firstly, the author assumes that since the number of students who cheat decreased, the honor code system is effectively working. However, this may not be the case. Although the author gives a numerical data of the number decreasing, the number of students enrolled in Groveton college could have actually decreased. Therefore, the ratio of students who cheat may have stayed the same or even increased, if worse. In addition, the number that the writer propounds is a data from 5 years ago and the current one. The number surely decreased but we do not know whether the number has been decreasing. The number could have surged during the 5 years. Therefore, further evidence pertaining to the number of cheating is needed to support the claim and assess it.
Secondly, what the students answered from the survey is not conclusively proven to justify the honor code being efficient. The students, as the author says, said that the honor code system will work better than the previous system where teachers were the people to expose the cheating. However, we do not know whether students answered this way aiming for the less number of cheating. They could have replied this way in order to cheat easier. As such, more detailed evidence needs to be considered whether the students really aim for less cheating among them is warranted since the argument is largely based on it.
Lastly, the author assumes that since the honor code system in Groveton college worked well, it will be also in other colleges and universities as well. However, there is no supporting evidence to claim this way. Groveton college students could be generally the one who easily follow the rules whereas all other college students seek for other ways to cheat when honor code system is initiated. In addition, the Groveton college students' number of cheating could have decreased not only with the honor code system, but also with other strict penalties if a student cheats. Therefore, if other colleges only accepts the honor code system, they will not be able to predict the similar results as the Groveton college. Therefore, it is necessary to consider evidence about whether the Groveton college had only honor code system regarding cheating and whether other college student's characteristics are similar to that of Groveton.
In sum, the author's claim is not very well supported as it stands in its current form. Further evidence pertaining to the the number of cheating, whether students answered from a genuine intention, and the situation comparing the Groveton and the others is crucial in determining the validity of the claim.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- not exactly. Better to say: there is no causation between the cases of cheating and honor code. A lot of factors may cause the decline.
argument 2 -- not exactly. Need to compare the rate if teachers closely monitored students. Maybe even more students will not cheat by the old system.
argument 3 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 487 350
No. of Characters: 2455 1500
No. of Different Words: 199 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.698 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.041 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.496 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 195 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 143 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 97 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 42 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.292 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.419 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.792 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.341 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.537 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.125 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 809, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[2]
Message: Possible agreement error -- use past participle here: 'honored'.
Suggestion: honored
...t whether the Groveton college had only honor code system regarding cheating and whet...
^^^^^
Line 9, column 88, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Further,
...orted as it stands in its current form. Further evidence pertaining to the the number o...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 119, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a word
Suggestion: the
...nt form. Further evidence pertaining to the the number of cheating, whether students an...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 119, Rule ID: DT_DT[1]
Message: Maybe you need to remove one determiner so that only 'the' or 'the' is left.
Suggestion: the; the
...nt form. Further evidence pertaining to the the number of cheating, whether students an...
^^^^^^^
Discourse Markers used:
['actually', 'also', 'but', 'first', 'firstly', 'however', 'if', 'lastly', 'may', 'really', 'regarding', 'second', 'secondly', 'so', 'therefore', 'thus', 'well', 'whereas', 'while', 'in addition']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.244444444444 0.25644967241 95% => OK
Verbs: 0.177777777778 0.15541462614 114% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0611111111111 0.0836205057962 73% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0796296296296 0.0520304965353 153% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0203703703704 0.0272364105082 75% => OK
Prepositions: 0.112962962963 0.125424944231 90% => OK
Participles: 0.0611111111111 0.0416121511921 147% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.5864670704 2.79052419416 93% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0240740740741 0.026700313972 90% => OK
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.124074074074 0.113004496875 110% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0222222222222 0.0255425247493 87% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.012962962963 0.0127820249294 101% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 3007.0 2731.13054187 110% => OK
No of words: 487.0 446.07635468 109% => OK
Chars per words: 6.17453798768 6.12365571057 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.69766713281 4.57801047555 103% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.406570841889 0.378187486979 108% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.303901437372 0.287650121315 106% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.213552361396 0.208842608468 102% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.102669404517 0.135150697306 76% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.5864670704 2.79052419416 93% => OK
Unique words: 211.0 207.018472906 102% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.433264887064 0.469332199767 92% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
Word variations: 48.8134924207 52.1807786196 94% => OK
How many sentences: 24.0 20.039408867 120% => OK
Sentence length: 20.2916666667 23.2022227129 87% => OK
Sentence length SD: 49.1532290959 57.7814097925 85% => OK
Chars per sentence: 125.291666667 141.986410481 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.2916666667 23.2022227129 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.833333333333 0.724660767414 115% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 3.58251231527 112% => OK
Readability: 50.6818104038 51.9672348444 98% => OK
Elegance: 1.50666666667 1.8405768891 82% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.226418694511 0.441005458295 51% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.118482623683 0.135418324435 87% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0842714996255 0.0829849096947 102% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.593112219966 0.58762219726 101% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.157261713663 0.147661913831 107% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.111848906554 0.193483328276 58% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.067721231616 0.0970749176394 70% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.524437105624 0.42659136922 123% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0765274262407 0.0774707102158 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.172163019348 0.312017818177 55% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0822523252648 0.0698173142475 118% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.33743842365 144% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.87684729064 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.82512315271 21% => More neutral sentences wanted.
Positive topic words: 11.0 6.46551724138 170% => OK
Negative topic words: 10.0 5.36822660099 186% => OK
Neutral topic words: 1.0 2.82389162562 35% => OK
Total topic words: 22.0 14.657635468 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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Rates: 70.83 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.25 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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Note: This is not the final score. 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.