There is now evidence that the relaxed pace of life in small towns promotes better health and greater longevity than does the hectic pace of life in big cities. Businesses in the small town of Leeville report fewer days of sick leave taken by individual workers than do businesses in the nearby large city of Masonton. Furthermore, Leeville has only one physician for its one thousand residents, but in Masonton the proportion of physicians to residents is five times as high. Finally, the average age of Leeville residents is significantly higher than that of Masonton residents. These findings suggest that people seeking longer and healthier lives should consider moving to small communities.
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The author claims that the relaxed pace of life in small towns promotes better health and longer life than does the busy life in big cities. He or she offers an interesting argument, but it suffers from logical flaws and gaps in evidence. While the connections suggested are reasonable, there are many other possible scenarios that should discourage us from claiming that composed life in small towns benefits health and longevity.
To begin with, the author presents fewer reports of medical leave taken by individual workers in Leeville than Masonton as the evidence to his or her claim. Yet there is no reason to believe that Masonton really represents the big cities. More medical leaves in Masonton may be the Masonton's peculiarity rather the big cities's characteristic. Maybe Masonton's distinct features such as daily temperature range, harsh rain, etc encourage the workers to take sick leave. Thus we must ask, Does Masonton really represents the big cities? Without answering the questions, we cannot determine whether small town's residents are more healthier than big cities's residents or not.
Let us assume, though, Masonton really represents the big cities. We are then prompted to ask whether fewer medical leaves really imply healthier life. There are several reasons other than unhealthier life that cause medical leave. What if the businesses in Masonton are more lenient to sick leave? Maybe the businesses in Leeville require onerous tasks to take sick leave and the demanding requirements may discourage employers to take sick leave. Without more detailed information about the businesses's policy about sick leave, we cannot assume that small town promotes healthier life.
Secondly, the authors present the high ratio of physicians to residents in Masonton as the evidence. However the mere fact of high proposition of physicians can not reveal the fact that big cities promotes unhealthier life. The reason of low ratio of physicians in Leeville may due to other reasons such as lack of countryside's residents inability to pay medical cure or physician's personal desire to live in big cities. We need more thorough researches of high doctor ratio in big cities to conclude big cities promotes ill health. Without these researches we can not affirm the claim.
Finally, we cannot take for granted that metropolis provides unhealthier life because of the mere fact that average age of Masonton is lower comparing to Leeville. There may be other reasons for more higher average age of Leeville other than health: Elder retiree's preference to live in small town, high proportion of children because of their parents's desire to raise them in big city, etc. Therefore by only comparing the average age between big city and small town, we cannot affirm whether the rural benefits greater longevity and urban damages lifespan.
A close examination of all the assumptions made in the author's claim reveals that the he or she does not have enough justification to claim the advantage of the rural cities to healthier life and longer life. Before we access to more detailed information and data it is hasty to assume that it is recommended to live in suburban area to have healthful life and longer life expectancy.
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: 24 15
No. of Words: 525 350
No. of Characters: 2668 1500
No. of Different Words: 229 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.787 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.082 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.615 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 198 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 147 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 108 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 65 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.875 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.716 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.337 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.57 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.232 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 469, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Thus,
...courage the workers to take sick leave. Thus we must ask, Does Masonton really repre...
^^^^
Line 3, column 622, Rule ID: MOST_COMPARATIVE[2]
Message: Use only 'healthier' (without 'more') when you use the comparative.
Suggestion: healthier
...rmine whether small towns residents are more healthier than big citiess residents or not. L...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 102, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: However,
... residents in Masonton as the evidence. However the mere fact of high proposition of ph...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 196, Rule ID: MOST_COMPARATIVE[2]
Message: Use only 'higher' (without 'more') when you use the comparative.
Suggestion: higher
...eeville. There may be other reasons for more higher average age of Leeville other than heal...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 11, column 83, Rule ID: DT_PRP[1]
Message: Possible typo. Did you mean 'the' or 'he'?
Suggestion: the; he
... made in the authors claim reveals that the he or she does not have enough justificati...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, however, if, may, really, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, thus, while, such as, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 12.0 19.6327345309 61% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 34.0 28.8173652695 118% => OK
Preposition: 66.0 55.5748502994 119% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2717.0 2260.96107784 120% => OK
No of words: 525.0 441.139720559 119% => OK
Chars per words: 5.17523809524 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.78673985869 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.62664940082 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 236.0 204.123752495 116% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.449523809524 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 867.6 705.55239521 123% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 48.1284281896 57.8364921388 83% => OK
Chars per sentence: 108.68 119.503703932 91% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.0 23.324526521 90% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.56 5.70786347227 80% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => OK
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: 0.366668734453 0.218282227539 168% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.102083239507 0.0743258471296 137% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.100605161281 0.0701772020484 143% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.195212926523 0.128457276422 152% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0809707145813 0.0628817314937 129% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.5 14.3799401198 94% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 41.7 48.3550499002 86% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.76 12.5979740519 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.08 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 113.0 98.500998004 115% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.