While the Department of Education in the state of Attra recommends that high school students be assigned homework every day, the data from a recent statewide survey of high school math and science teachers give us reason to question the usefulness of daily homework. In the district of Sanlee, 86 percent of the teachers reported assigning homework three to five times a week, whereas in the district of Marlee, less than 25 percent of the teachers reported assigning homework three to five times a week. Yet the students in Marlee earn better grades overall and are less likely to be required to repeat a year of school than are the students in Sanlee. Therefore, all teachers in our high schools should assign homework no more than twice a week.
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 argument that all teachers in high schools should assign homework no more than twice a week is logically unsound since it fails to acknowledge certain crucial assumptions.
First of all, the writer argues that since only 25 percent of teachers assign homework to students in Marlee, this is the sole reason that students are earning good grades and are less likely to repeat a school year. However, this might not be the reason at all. The students at Marlee may be keen to study on their own and also they have higher caliber compared to the students at Sanlee. If the claim presented any information regarding the cognitive abilities of both the town’s students, the claim would have been justified.
Secondly, the author proffers that the students at Sanlee should also be given less homework, so that they can perform better and have a lesser chance of failing a class. But apples aren’t oranges. The reason for underperforming could be two-fold. First, the students may not be understanding what they are being taught. Second, the teachers might be giving so much homework because they do not want to teach as much in the classroom. The failure to take these assumptions into account questions the veracity of the claim. Also, if the students are not of that mental capability, they might be requiring a certain amount of daily homework in order to get them on the same page as others.
Lastly, the author’s comparison of the percentages of teachers between the two towns is vague. There are no statistics provided about the population of the two towns that could verify that these two could be related. The fact that 86 percent teachers give homework three to five times a week at Sanlee may be because the teaching faculty is relatively low at Sanlee. In addition, the 25 percent teachers assigning homework to students at Marlee, might be the same number of teachers at Sanlee. Since we could not compare percentages with numbers and there are no demographics that could authenticate this claim, it renders itself fallacious.
Therefore, the argument that the daily homework should be reduced by all teachers in order to improve the grades of students is spurious, because it fails to justify its assumptions and does not make a cogent case.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- not OK. Need to argue against the conclusion always. For this topic it is:
Therefore, all teachers in our high schools should assign homework no more than twice a week.
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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: 18 15
No. of Words: 384 350
No. of Characters: 1832 1500
No. of Different Words: 187 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.427 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.771 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.52 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 135 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 94 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 66 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 28 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.333 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.475 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.722 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.313 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.517 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.07 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 282, Rule ID: PROGRESSIVE_VERBS[1]
Message: This verb is normally not used in the progressive form. Try a simple form instead.
...e two-fold. First, the students may not be understanding what they are being taught. Second, the...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, lastly, may, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, in addition, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => OK
Nominalization: 5.0 16.3942115768 30% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1900.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 383.0 441.139720559 87% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.96083550914 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.42384287591 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.6581352825 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 191.0 204.123752495 94% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.498694516971 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 570.6 705.55239521 81% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 52.5645106301 57.8364921388 91% => OK
Chars per sentence: 105.555555556 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.2777777778 23.324526521 91% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.61111111111 5.70786347227 116% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => 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: 0.197764157646 0.218282227539 91% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0662165158101 0.0743258471296 89% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0473290335615 0.0701772020484 67% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.120049845219 0.128457276422 93% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0277130083223 0.0628817314937 44% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.6 14.3799401198 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 48.3550499002 121% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.49 12.5979740519 91% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.77 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 75.0 98.500998004 76% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => 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.