"Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Tertia and
concluded from his observations that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village
rather than by their own biological parents. However, my recent interviews with children
living in the group of islands that includes Tertia show that these children spend much more
time talking about their biological parents than about other adults in the village. This
research of mine proves that Dr. Field's conclusion about Tertian village culture is invalid
and thus that the observation-centered approach to studying cultures is invalid as well. The
interview-centered method that my team of graduate students is currently using in Tertia will
establish a much more accurate understanding of child-rearing traditions there and in other
island cultures."
The article written by Dr. Karp contains various flaws or gaps that need to be filled in order to come to a conclusion regarding the culture of the people on the island of Tertia. While, Dr. Karp might be true regarding their research but have not provided enough evidences which undermines their whole study based on the child-rearing culture of the island.
First, there is a gap of twenty years between the research conducted by Dr. Field and the current research going on by Dr. Karp and their graduate students. There might have been children rearing by an entire village twenty years ago which changed recently as cultures evolve and change. A possibility also exists where the children of village might not have been completely honest with strangers i.e. Dr. Karp's students interviewing them. This does not prove that observation-centered approach to studying cultures is wrong or does not provide results.
Second, there is no corelation between who were the children of village reared by and who do the children talk about when asked in interview. It totally depends on the type of questions asked to the children which might not have been correct standard for comparison between Dr. Field's and Dr. Karp's study. Also, there are no statistical values mentioned as to what ratio of children from village were interviewed or which age range did the interviewed children lie in.
Third, graduate students might not be the correct entities for carrying out this research as students usually slack of their work and are not dilligent. Stating that interview-centered approach is better than observation-centered on the basis of someone else's work can be a bit risky step for Dr. Karp. Another thing to note here is that there is no guarantee that the method proposed by Dr. Karp will be more accurate and show the desired results.
Finally, Dr. Karp mentions that interview-centered methods used by their team of students are based in the village of Tertia which in turn does not prove that other island cultures might have the same children-rearing approach as the people of Tertia have. These questions need to be answered while filling the gaps and a proper base for comparison of studies of two anthropologists should be considered to come a conclusion.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 377 350
No. of Characters: 1864 1500
No. of Different Words: 183 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.406 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.944 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.887 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 126 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 99 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 66 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 31 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.929 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.65 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.714 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.375 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.633 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.092 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, regarding, second, so, third, while, another thing, as to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => OK
Nominalization: 3.0 16.3942115768 18% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1896.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 377.0 441.139720559 85% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.02917771883 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.4064143971 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.91112094638 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 187.0 204.123752495 92% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.496021220159 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 562.5 705.55239521 80% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 2.0 8.76447105788 23% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => 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: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 31.5711861658 57.8364921388 55% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 135.428571429 119.503703932 113% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.9285714286 23.324526521 115% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.0 5.70786347227 105% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.244978393951 0.218282227539 112% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0911843779669 0.0743258471296 123% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0547577452647 0.0701772020484 78% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.14112740255 0.128457276422 110% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0408903543791 0.0628817314937 65% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.7 14.3799401198 109% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 53.55 48.3550499002 111% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.19 12.5979740519 97% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.28 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 80.0 98.500998004 81% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => 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.