Workers in the small town of Leeville take fewer sick days than workers in the large city of Masonton, 50 miles away. Moreover, relative to population size, the diagnosis of stress-related illness is proportionally much lower in Leeville than in Masonton.

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Workers in the small town of Leeville take fewer sick days than workers in the large city of Masonton, 50 miles away. Moreover, relative to population size, the diagnosis of stress-related illness is proportionally much lower in Leeville than in Masonton. According to Leeville Chmaber of Commerce, these facts can be attributed to the health benefits of the relatively relaxed pace of life in Leeville.

Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.

In the above argument, author presented a review of the health issues of two places- a smaller town: Leeville and a larger one: Masonton. The author described about the stress level of employees working there; having negligible geographic distance of 50 miles, the stress level of workers of prior is higher than that of Masonton. Considering this, the author concluded that in long period of time, a relaxed mode of life leads to salubrious health.

However, in the absence of reliable information, the author extrapolated the results that are quite baseless. At the first place, the working place or the quality of work of both the places has not been prescribed; one can't compare the consequences of work environment without considering quality of jobs. Moreover, if one doesn't require sick leave during his work period that doesn't mean that he or she is healthy; it depends upon the contract abiding, ongoing project requirements etc under which he is functioning in his office. Lastly, considering geographic disparity is not the only way to compare the health of two places; one needs to consider heredity pattern, prevalence of environment etc to reach to a valid solution.

At the first place, the author gave no heed to describe the profession opted by the workers of both places; Had workers of Leeville be engaged in easy work environment like working as gym instructors or agricultural related activities like animal husbandry, fisheries etc.(since they belong to small town), their health issues be minimal as compared to the workers employed in cut throat competition of bigger cities like construction or manufacturing work of Mansotan where the people are doing manual labor. In this regard, one can never compare the stress or burden of work. Furthermore, the author didn't gave any description about the population of both places; an exact numerical figure gives proper picture about the analysis of a particular issue. In the lack of these pre-requisite data, having any hypothesis about the comparison of both will be vague and dubious.

Along with this, non-requirement of sick leave never means a person is healthy; it depends upon the position one is holding in office that whether he/she affords to take a day off or not. For example, the employees of Leeville might be working as an active undercover agent or engaged in his family-oriented business, in this particular stream, they are not authorized to take sick leaves because they work under extreme pressure, handling major official issues. While the Mansotan employees, be engaged as test-engineers and during non-functioning of project of their department, they afford to relax even during mild cough-cold. So having a comparison between two on the basis of sick leave will yield flimsy conclusions.

Last but not the least; the author refuted any other factors affect on employees’ health in spite of work-place. There might be tendency of Mansotan people of having cancer due to contaminated water from a dirty watercourse nearby or genetic ancestral tendency to fall for chronic diseases like diabetes, or they might be tempted for the wrong eating habits leading to obesity, exposure to polluted environment etc. If other factors are not considered the author is entirely wrong to blame the work place for unhealthy life.

To conclude, minute geographic distance never assures the similarity of living styles of two places. Had the author been considered all the above discussed issues, his results would have been reliably acceptable. On the living style of individual, it’s not only work environment that casts impact but various factors amalgam together. To bolster the argument, the author needs more concrete answers whether the Leevile chamber commerce is credible and clarify how the stress related illness leads to health benefits of the relatively relaxed pace of life in Leevile.

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The essay is not exactly right on the topic. Read the topic again:
'Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.'

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http://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-essays/workers-small-town-leeville-take-…
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 629 350
No. of Characters: 3181 1500
No. of Different Words: 309 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.008 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.057 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.738 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 251 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 177 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 111 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 69 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 28.591 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 17.103 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.545 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.284 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.525 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.057 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5