In surveys Mason City residents rank water sports (swimming, boating and fishing) among their favorite recreational activities. The Mason River flowing through the city is rarely used for these pursuits, however, and the city park department devotes little of its budget to maintaining riverside recreational facilities. For years there have been complaints from residents about the quality of the river's water and the river's smell. In response, the state has recently announced plans to clean up Mason River. Use of the river for water sports is therefore sure to increase. The city government should for that reason devote more money in this year's budget to riverside recreational facilities.
The text argues that the city government should devote more money to improving the riverside recreational facilities. However, this argument is invalidated by the weak and insecure evidence supporting it.
Surveys can be problematic. Without describing the methods of the survey, one has no idea who was sampled and how the questions were posed. The sample population of the survey could have been biased to include a higher proportion of residents who live on the river and therefore want to see more money go into its maintenance and care. Additionally, questions can be posed in ways that elicit certain answers. For example, the answers to the question "What are your favorite recreational activities?" could have been limited to activities related to water sports, so that stakeholders who want to see the river improved could show results that support their claim, despite being biased. Including the methods of the survey could improve the argument.
Another issue with surveys is that people can misreport information. Even if the survey was framed in an unbiased matter, the people taking the survey could overestimate their interest in or likelihood to participate in certain activities. It is common for people to make themselves come off as "more interested" or "more active" than they really are because it makes them feel better. One can imagine a man sitting on a couch, eating chips, watching televisions, and filling out this survey thinking "Oh yes, I love swimming!" But, would he actually get up and do it? A survey cannot tell you that. In order to improve the survey, it could include a question like "How often in a month do you do such recreational activities?" to gauge how likely the recreational activities are to be used.
Finally, the main complaint of city residents is that the river quality is not up to their standard and that the river smells, not that the quality of the riverside recreational facilities are poor. Perhaps, the state's clean up of Mason River will be enough for residents to want to start using the river for recreation purposes. Thus, the city would not need to devote more money for the recreational facilities and can put the money to use elsewhere. The argument could be improved by adding a question to the survey about resident's interest in using the riverside recreational facilities.
The argument in support of the city designating more money for the improvement of the riverside recreational facilities is invalidated by weaknesses in the survey, including the possibility of biases and misreporting, and the potential for the state's clean up of the river to increase resident usage of the river.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 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: 439 350
No. of Characters: 2167 1500
No. of Different Words: 213 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.577 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.936 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.781 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 153 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 116 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 83 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 60 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.95 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.241 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.4 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.309 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.511 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.089 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, finally, however, if, really, so, therefore, thus, for example
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2281.0 2260.96107784 101% => OK
No of words: 439.0 441.139720559 100% => OK
Chars per words: 5.19589977221 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.57737117129 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.05038862635 2.78398813304 110% => OK
Unique words: 216.0 204.123752495 106% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.492027334852 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 729.0 705.55239521 103% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 76.3427538571 57.8364921388 132% => OK
Chars per sentence: 120.052631579 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.1052631579 23.324526521 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.05263157895 5.70786347227 71% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => 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: 0.221016387345 0.218282227539 101% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0744675696657 0.0743258471296 100% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0610529300823 0.0701772020484 87% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.14586754193 0.128457276422 114% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0787211154236 0.0628817314937 125% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.6 14.3799401198 102% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 39.67 48.3550499002 82% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.18 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.63 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 107.0 98.500998004 109% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.