While the Department of Education in the state of Attra suggests 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, we recommend that all teachers in our high schools should assign homework no more than twice a week.
In the author's recommendation, author concludes that teachers in high school should assign homework to students no more than twice a week. However this recommendation of author hinges on three assumptions which if disproven would significantly hinder the efficacy of this recommendation.
Firstly, is the population in Sanlee similar to that of Marlee? It may be the case than children in Sanlee are in general less academically gifted than the students of Marlee. In that case, even with the higher homework volume, the students would tend to provide a worse result than Sanlee. It may also be true that students of Marlee, despite being given more homework, are not really interested in completing them. Maybe they submit incomplete work day after day. In such case as well, homework frequency would not represent the total gain in knowledge.
Secondly, are homeworks the main reason for increase in grades of students of Sanlee? It may be possible that while they are in general provided homeworks in smaller frequencies, the volume of that homework may be much larger than that of Marlee. It that case the total homework of Sanlee may even be bigger than that of Marlee. Maybe, students in Sanlee are much better cheaters in exam than students of Marlee. If that is the case, the academic result would not be a balanced representation of the effect of homeworks.
Finally, are the results of survey robust and exhaustive? The survey provides results from the cities of Marlee and Sanlee but conveniently chooses to ignore rest of the areas. Maybe Marlee and Sanlee are an outlier out of all the areas in the state, the reason due to which author chooses to highlight them? It is possible, that while the proportion of homework and the results are inverse in this case, it may be direct for majority of the cities in the state. It may also be the case, that the recent year, in which survey was taken was an aberration and in fact most of the times, Marlee outstrips Sanlee in terms of academic performance. I am also inclined to believe more in the recommendations of Department of Education as it would have much more data and therefore it's recommendations would be much more robust.
To conclude, while it may be true that in accordance with author's recommendations, lowering the frequency of homework may increase the academic perforance of the school, he needs to provide more evidence regarding the aforementioned points. He needs to show the similarity between populations of Marlee and Sanlee, evidence regarding the key reasons for academic success in the area and that survey results are a balanced representation all the areas in the state. Failure to do would severly debilitate the solidity of his recommendations.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 8 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 458 350
No. of Characters: 2228 1500
No. of Different Words: 184 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.626 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.865 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.803 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 165 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 109 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 44 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.818 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.299 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.727 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.33 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.33 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.134 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 8, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
In the authors recommendation, author concludes that t...
^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 140, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: However,
... to students no more than twice a week. However this recommendation of author hinges on...
^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 212, Rule ID: IF_IS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'is'?
Suggestion: is
...uthor hinges on three assumptions which if disproven would significantly hinder th...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, firstly, however, if, may, really, regarding, second, secondly, so, therefore, well, while, in fact, in general
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 72.0 55.5748502994 130% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2277.0 2260.96107784 101% => OK
No of words: 458.0 441.139720559 104% => OK
Chars per words: 4.97161572052 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.62611441266 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.88272869198 2.78398813304 104% => OK
Unique words: 200.0 204.123752495 98% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.436681222707 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 726.3 705.55239521 103% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 12.0 4.96107784431 242% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.1284507066 57.8364921388 87% => OK
Chars per sentence: 103.5 119.503703932 87% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.8181818182 23.324526521 89% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.27272727273 5.70786347227 110% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 10.0 4.67664670659 214% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.19635878995 0.218282227539 90% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0602327744352 0.0743258471296 81% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0422302319039 0.0701772020484 60% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.113834680543 0.128457276422 89% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0143035332409 0.0628817314937 23% => 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: 12.4 14.3799401198 86% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.55 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.01 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 98.0 98.500998004 99% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.