Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Tertia. Using an observation-centered approach to studying Tertian culture, he concluded from his observations that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village rather than by their own biological parents. Recently another anthropologist, Dr. Karp, visited the group of islands that includes Tertia and used the interview-centered method to study child-rearing practices. In the interviews that Dr. Karp conducted with children living in this group of islands, the children spent much more time talking about their biological parents than about other adults in the village. Dr. Karp decided that Dr. Field's conclusion about Tertian village culture must be invalid. Some anthropologists recommend that to obtain accurate information on Tertian child-rearing practices, future research on the subject should be conducted via the interview-centered method.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
Dr. Karp, in his article claims that his interview-centered approach to studying cultures is superior to the observation-centered approach adopted by Dr. Field. To support his claim, Dr. Karp tries to contradict Dr. Field's findings that the children of Tertia were reared by an entire village. According to Dr. Karp, the evidence opposes these findings and show that it is actually their biological parents that are responsible for the children's upbringing. However, Dr. Karp's argument is full of assumptions and lacks evidence as discussed below.
Firstly, Dr. Karp opposes Dr. Field's 20 year old conclusion by using evidence from a more recent time. It is well and truly possible that the traditions and culture of Tertia might have undergone a massive change in this period of time. In this case, even though Dr. Karp's findings will not be wrong, they simply can not be used to invalidate Dr. Field's work. Instead of just focusing on the current situation, more evidence should be collected about the changes that have occurred in the last 20 years. If evidence is found supporting such a sociological change, then Dr. Karp's conclusion will stand invalidated.
Secondly, Dr. Karp assumes that simply talking more about biological parents in an interview implies that the parents have a larger role in the children's upbringing. This makes for a fallacious argument as it contains an unwarranted jump in logic. There is no evidence provided to link the two and under no circumstances can this conclusion be drawn simply on the bases of time spent in talking about the parents. More concrete evidence is required to confirm that indeed it is only the biological parents that are responsible for rearing of the children in the village. If no such evidence is found, Dr. Karp's argument will completely lose its merit.
Finally, even if we accept Dr. Karp's findings that the children in the island of Tertia are reared by their parents instead of by the whole village, as suggested by Dr. Field, it would be incorrect to claim that interview-centered approach is better than the observation-centered approach solely based on one case study. It might be possible that one approach works better for one village and explains the observations and the culture more holistically, but to extrapolate this observation to all the places would be erroneous. To actually make such a claim, both the approaches need to be tested on data collected at similar time for a large number of places. Only after testing them on a sufficient number of cultures, can one method be announced better than the other.
Therefore, we can see that Dr. Karp's argument as it stands now can not be taken at its face value. Not only is the evidence severely lacking, but the flow of the argument is fallacious as well. Therefore, a lot more evidence and a more cogent line of argument is required if we are to compare the two methods of studying cultures.
Comments
Essay evaluation 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: 21 15
No. of Words: 492 350
No. of Characters: 2395 1500
No. of Different Words: 213 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.71 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.868 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.871 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 172 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 134 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 95 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 47 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.429 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.324 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.338 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.546 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.125 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 222, Rule ID: PERIOD_OF_TIME[1]
Message: Use simply 'period'.
Suggestion: period
...have undergone a massive change in this period of time. In this case, even though Dr. Karps fi...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 13, column 636, Rule ID: LARGE_NUMBER_OF[1]
Message: Specify a number, remove phrase, or simply use 'many' or 'numerous'
Suggestion: many; numerous
...d on data collected at similar time for a large number of places. Only after testing them on a su...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, finally, first, firstly, however, if, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, well, talking about
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 28.0 19.6327345309 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 39.0 28.8173652695 135% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 58.0 55.5748502994 104% => OK
Nominalization: 20.0 16.3942115768 122% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2449.0 2260.96107784 108% => OK
No of words: 492.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 4.97764227642 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.70967865282 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.91704765082 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 218.0 204.123752495 107% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.443089430894 0.468620217663 95% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 750.6 705.55239521 106% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 2.0 8.76447105788 23% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 51.8660406027 57.8364921388 90% => OK
Chars per sentence: 116.619047619 119.503703932 98% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.4285714286 23.324526521 100% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.28571428571 5.70786347227 93% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.225991548077 0.218282227539 104% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0733273633256 0.0743258471296 99% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0867496156997 0.0701772020484 124% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.131394437116 0.128457276422 102% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0888968212181 0.0628817314937 141% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.7 14.3799401198 95% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 56.59 48.3550499002 117% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.9 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.12 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 104.0 98.500998004 106% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.