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.
In this passage, the author recommends that all teachers in their hight schools should assign homework no more than twice a week and predicts such approach could actually improve overall educational performance. Quite convincing though such recommendation appears at first glance, the author's recommendation could be unconvincing due to several unsubstantiated assumptions which, if prove unwarranted, will seriously challenge the author's conclusion.
To start off, the author's reasoning heavily relies on the assumption that homework payload in Marlee is much less than that of Sanlee. Based on this assumption the author therefore further extend his/her following reasoning about relevant student's performance. However, such assumption is potentially problematic because reports from teachers might not reflect the situation of assignment. Nor do we know whether total number of teachers in Marlee and Sanlee are at the commensurate level. Furthermore, we have no idea about the difficult level of assignment from these two different district. If it turns out that teachers mentioned above counterfeit their assignment status, or Marlee has relatively much small number of teachers than Marlee, or assignment from Marlee is much more difficult than Sanlee despite of relatively less amount, the author's guess about homework payload for Marlee and Sanlee is unconvincing.
Furthermore, by stating that Marlee's better student grade and less likelihood of repeating study in the next year, the author stays tenable about Marlee's students surpass those in Sanlee. However, we need to re-examine such assumption about Marlee's superior student performance based on the statement mentioned. It is likely that Marlee's university could lessen the grade standard in order to get better grade for student and enhance teacher's evaluation result. It is of equal probability that less leftover to the next year stems from the campus's goal to sail through the overall requirement for graduation rate. If any of these probabilities is true, we are inclined to believe that students in Marlee actually study better and give out comparably sterling grades than those in Sanlee.
Last but not least, while all of these aforementioned assumptions prove warranted, the author's recommendation is still unnecessary due to the doubtful assumption regarding the efficiency about application to all of high school in their region. Claiming that simply cloning the homework strategy of Marlee will be effective, the author seems too optimistic. It is unreasonable to assume that all of schools have the similar situation like Marlee, from both faculty resource and student status. Also, the author hastily comes to a conclusion that assignment with frequency of no more than twice a week will work, but does not discuss whether students who are eager to learn might ask for additionally d. Moreover, teachers in their high schools might vary for their enthusiasm and time for evaluation of homework outgrowth. If students' learning capacity are quite different from those of Marlee, or students in certain region have additional assignment requirement, or some teachers actually disgust for too much homework evaluation, we are reluctant to believe that such recommendation will be effective.
In summary, whether we should implement the author's recommendation heavily depends on the validity of these assumptions mentioned above. If these assumptions prove unwarranted, the author's recommendation could become little more than his/her wishful thinking and therefore we should resort to other solutions to improve the overall students' learning performance.
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: 550 350
No. of Characters: 3044 1500
No. of Different Words: 246 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.843 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.535 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.927 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 241 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 192 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 146 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 93 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.5 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.883 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.7 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.352 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.558 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.177 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 103, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...eir hight schools should assign homework no more than twice a week and predicts s...
^^
Line 1, column 287, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...mmendation appears at first glance, the authors recommendation could be unconvincing du...
^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 433, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...warranted, will seriously challenge the authors conclusion. To start off, the auth...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 240, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'students'' or 'student's'?
Suggestion: students'; student's
.../her following reasoning about relevant students performance. However, such assumption i...
^^^^^^^^
Line 13, column 88, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...tioned assumptions prove warranted, the authors recommendation is still unnecessary due...
^^^^^^^
Line 17, column 45, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...ummary, whether we should implement the authors recommendation heavily depends on the v...
^^^^^^^
Line 17, column 182, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...hese assumptions prove unwarranted, the authors recommendation could become little more...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, furthermore, however, if, moreover, regarding, so, still, therefore, thus, while, in summary, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 42.0 28.8173652695 146% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 74.0 55.5748502994 133% => OK
Nominalization: 33.0 16.3942115768 201% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3103.0 2260.96107784 137% => OK
No of words: 548.0 441.139720559 124% => OK
Chars per words: 5.66240875912 5.12650576532 110% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.83832613839 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.9728976949 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 252.0 204.123752495 123% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.459854014599 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 936.9 705.55239521 133% => 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: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 6.0 1.67365269461 358% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 61.3529249987 57.8364921388 106% => OK
Chars per sentence: 147.761904762 119.503703932 124% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.0952380952 23.324526521 112% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.14285714286 5.70786347227 108% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 7.0 5.25449101796 133% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 14.0 8.20758483034 171% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.184127456499 0.218282227539 84% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0613615315362 0.0743258471296 83% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0374583561319 0.0701772020484 53% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.105432781283 0.128457276422 82% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.056522347028 0.0628817314937 90% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.3 14.3799401198 127% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 36.63 48.3550499002 76% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.6 12.197005988 120% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.84 12.5979740519 126% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.76 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 133.0 98.500998004 135% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.