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 the Leeville Chamber 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 argument, the author suggests that the people should consider moving to smaller towns where the pace of life is slow and less hectic to improve the health and overall life expectancy. The conclusion of the argument is based on several premises, which, if correct, might indicate that the argument holds water. However, as it stands now, the conclusion relies on three unwarrented assumptions, which diminish the plausibility of the argument.
First of all, the author assumes that the relaxed pace of life in small town in contrary to the hectic pace of life in larger cities is the only sole causal factor for the better health and longer life of the people residing in those smaller towns. However, there could be various other factors like the pollution, easy access of home assessories, etc. that make life easier, and many more factors that might be influencial to people's health. For instance, many smaller towns lack proper health facilites that can assist people during severe health problem which can greatly hinder the overall health of the people. Just shifting from the hectic life of large town to slow pace life of small town might not be sufficient enough for better health, as suggested by the author.
Moreover, the case of the small town of Leeville vs the large city of Masonton could be one off exception and the observation might not be applicable for other places as well. Maybe, the people living in the city of Masonton had many underlying health issue irrespective of their hectic lifestyle. For example, Mumbai is one of the highly densed city in India and Pune is another smaller town in its vicinity. However, people still prefer Mumbai to reside despite the fact that there is a possibility of slow paced life in Pune. The reason could be unavailability of better health facility or maybe the new town is not pollution free and not in the state to promote better health itself. It seems like a far-fetched conclusion that the same case as that mentioned in the argument would be applicable for all other towns and cities. Such assumptions, without any further support, seems bleak and heavily undermine the suggestion made by the author.
Finally, the author assumes that the sick leave taken by the workers at the city of Masonton is due to the health issue only and the workers are not using it for other purposes. In many cases, due to hectic lifestyle, workers might ask for a sick leave and complete their other pending obligations. For instance, a person might be taking a sick leave to attend a parents meet at his child's school, because he already used up the quota of his casual leave. The list of such examples might go on and on without the management team even noticing it. So, to base the conclusion on this assumption, only makes the conclusion weak and unpersuasive.
To conclude, the author might have made a valid suggestion that the health and life expectancy of people can be enhanced by living in smaller towns in comparison to the cities with hectic lifestyle. However, as it stands now, the assumptions on which the suggestion is based seem unwarrented and hinder the plausibility of the suggestion unless supported further by the author with some more pieces of evidence.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 8 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 8 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 553 350
No. of Characters: 2625 1500
No. of Different Words: 231 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.849 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.747 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.439 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 191 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 116 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 75 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 45 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.333 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.791 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.619 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.323 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.323 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.101 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 229, Rule ID: MANY_NN_U[3]
Message: Possible agreement error. The noun health seems to be uncountable; consider using: 'much underlying health', 'a good deal of underlying health'.
Suggestion: much underlying health; a good deal of underlying health
...ople living in the city of Masonton had many underlying health issue irrespective of their hectic life...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 4, column 362, Rule ID: A_PLURAL[1]
Message: Don't use indefinite articles with plural words. Did you mean 'a parent' or simply 'parents'?
Suggestion: a parent; parents
... might be taking a sick leave to attend a parents meet at his childs school, because he a...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
finally, first, however, if, may, moreover, so, still, well, for example, for instance, such as, first of all, in many cases
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 76.0 55.5748502994 137% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2682.0 2260.96107784 119% => OK
No of words: 553.0 441.139720559 125% => OK
Chars per words: 4.84990958409 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.84932490483 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.53368814527 2.78398813304 91% => OK
Unique words: 242.0 204.123752495 119% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.437613019892 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 839.7 705.55239521 119% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 41.5849474118 57.8364921388 72% => OK
Chars per sentence: 121.909090909 119.503703932 102% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.1363636364 23.324526521 108% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.63636363636 5.70786347227 99% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.0978384215948 0.218282227539 45% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0331920333892 0.0743258471296 45% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0448540465641 0.0701772020484 64% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0566343832195 0.128457276422 44% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0393072489701 0.0628817314937 63% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.0 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 54.56 48.3550499002 113% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.15 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.02 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 110.0 98.500998004 112% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.