When XYZ lays off employees, it pays Delany Personnel Firm to offer those employees assistance in creating résumés and developing interviewing skills, if they so desire. Laid-off employees have benefited greatly from Delany's services: last year those who used Delany found jobs much more quickly than did those who did not. Recently, it has been proposed that we use the less expensive Walsh Personnel Firm in place of Delany. This would be a mistake because eight years ago, when XYZ was using Walsh, only half of the workers we laid off at that time found jobs within a year. Moreover, Delany is clearly superior, as evidenced by its bigger staff and larger number of branch offices. After all, last year Delany's clients took an average of six months to find jobs, whereas Walsh's clients took nine."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The author concludes that XYZ must use Delany Personnel Firm instead of Walsh Personnel Firm to offer laid-off employees assistance in finding jobs. To support this conclusion, the author uses XYZ’s experience with Walsh eight years ago and claims that Walsh was less effective in providing assistance than Delany. Furthermore, the author claims that Delany is clearly superior because it has larger number of branch offices and staffs. However, this argument is unpersuasive to me since it relies on weak assumptions that are defective in a logical aspect.
First, the author proposes that Delany is superior than Walsh because Delany, in current days, took shorter time to find jobs for the laid-off employees than Walsh did in eight years ago. However, the author’s comparison is not persuasive because he or she compares two companies’ performances at two different time points. At this moment, we do not know how the job market was like in eight years ago. If the job market was depressed and there were simply less positions available eight years ago, Delany could have suffered from finding jobs for the employees, too. In order to bolster his or her claim, the author must provide performance reports from Walsh and Delany collected from eight years ago and compare them.
Second, the author claims that Delany is superior because it has more staffs and branch offices than Walsh. Yet, the fact that Delany has more staffs and offices does not necessarily represent its superiority. On the other hand, its service and performance can be mediocre despite its huge size because it has spent too much budget on expanding the business, not enhancing the service quality. At this moment, we are not sure how much Delany spends its budget on training its staffs and developing programs, both of which are two important contents that directly enhances the quality of service. Instead of claiming that Delany is superior due to its large business size, the author must provide information about its service quality.
Third, the author fails to provide clear information about qualities of jobs that Delany and Walsh found for the laid-off employees in the last year. Though Delany took shorter time than Walsh to find jobs for its clients, as the author mentioned, we do not know what type of jobs each company found for its clients. It is possible that Delany took shorter time because it found positions that are easy to apply but with low salary.
To conclude, the argument relies on several poor assumptions as I mentioned above and does not provide adequate information. To strengthen the argument, the author must provide more evidences, such as performance reports of both companies at the same time point, how much Delany spends its budget to improve its service quality and what quality of jobs each companies search for the clients. As a result, without the additional information indicated above, the argument is vulnerable to criticism.
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: 20 15
No. of Words: 486 350
No. of Characters: 2411 1500
No. of Different Words: 208 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.695 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.961 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.438 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 184 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 129 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 80 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 53 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.3 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.086 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.55 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.373 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.542 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.195 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 112, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'employees'' or 'employee's'?
Suggestion: employees'; employee's
... Walsh Personnel Firm to offer laid-off employees assistance in finding jobs. To support ...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 52, Rule ID: SUPERIOR_THAN[1]
Message: The adjective superior is normally used with 'to'.
Suggestion: to
...author proposes that Delany is superior than Walsh because Delany, in current days, ...
^^^^
Line 3, column 468, Rule ID: FEWER_LESS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'fewer'? The noun positions is countable.
Suggestion: fewer
...ket was depressed and there were simply less positions available eight years ago, De...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, furthermore, however, if, second, so, then, third, such as, as a result, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 12.9520958084 46% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 43.0 28.8173652695 149% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 55.0 55.5748502994 99% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2490.0 2260.96107784 110% => OK
No of words: 486.0 441.139720559 110% => OK
Chars per words: 5.12345679012 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.69525374022 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.57321453578 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 219.0 204.123752495 107% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.450617283951 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 760.5 705.55239521 108% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 10.0 4.22255489022 237% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 41.5126486748 57.8364921388 72% => OK
Chars per sentence: 124.5 119.503703932 104% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.3 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.1 5.70786347227 89% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.173523543484 0.218282227539 79% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0646153151112 0.0743258471296 87% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0744538628395 0.0701772020484 106% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.108124198644 0.128457276422 84% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0640735066687 0.0628817314937 102% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.8 14.3799401198 103% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.71 12.5979740519 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.82 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 92.0 98.500998004 93% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 9.0 12.3882235529 73% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.