In 1995 a microscopic fungus called phytophthora ramorum, or P. ramorum, was first detected in the forests of the western United States. P. ramorum infects trees and causes particularly serious damage in oak trees: in many infected oaks, leaves wither rapidly, large cracks appear in the bark, and the trees die. A spread of P. ramorum represents a serious threat to the forests in the western states. Several methods of protecting the forests have been proposed. First, stopping P. ramorum spores from spreading would surely be an effective method. Spores are small particles through which all fungi, including P. ramorum, reproduce. Researchers have discovered that many P. ramorum spores can be found along hiking or biking trails, suggesting human-assisted spread by way of shoes and bicycle tires. A few measures to prevent such human-assisted spread-like encouraging hikers to wash their shoes and installing new bike scrubbers on bicycle trails-would be an effective and low-cost way to stop the spread of P. ramorum. Second, there are a few fungicidal (fungus-fighting) chemicals that can be used to protect the oak trees. Some of these chemicals stimulate the oak trees’ natural defenses against the P. ramorum fungus and have been found in small-scale tryouts to significantly reduce the likelihood that the oaks will be infected. A third way to fight P. ramorum is a practice called clear-cutting. This approach starts with cutting and burning the diseased oaks, but it also involves cutting and burning the seemingly healthy vegetation (bushes and other kinds of trees) surrounding the oaks. This is done because some of the surrounding plants and trees may be infected even though they do not show any symptoms of the disease. Cleaning large areas of vegetation in places where diseased trees are found is often an efficient measure to stop the spread of infections
The reading passage discusses several methods to protect forest trees against the fungus P.ramorum, which causes particularly serious damage and death in oak trees. However, the speaker in the lecture casts doubt on the effectiveness of solutions proposed in the article. She mentions that these solutions would be impractical in any given situation.
First and foremost, the author claims that limiting the spread of the spores by humans is one way to tackle this issue. Nevertheless, the lecturer points out that human-assisted spread is not the only way the spores travel. According to the lecture, the spores also get carried long distances when the rainfalls wash them into water streams. As a result, these precautions for bikers would provide very little help.
Secondly, the writer suggests the use of fungicides that promote the natural defense mechanisms of oak trees against the fungus. The article assumes that this medication was tried on a small-scale and proved to be effective in preventing the trees from getting infected. In contrast, the lecturer argues that this process would be too arduous and expensive since the drug only works when injected in the tree trunks and the injection has to be repeated after few months. Thus, this is more convenient for some trees in a city park but it's preposterous to apply this technique in a whole forest which has thousands of trees and each of them would need a single injection every few months.
Lastly, the excerpt holds that clear cutting is an efficient measure to control infections. According to the article, diseased oaks are firstly removed then all the surrounding vegetation is also cleared even though it might not be displaying symptoms. The lecturer, on the other hand, thinks that this could do more harm than good. She brings the fact that clear cutting would destroy rare species which happens to be in the healthy vegetation around diseased oaks.
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 13, column 468, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ealthy vegetation around diseased oaks.
^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, however, lastly, nevertheless, second, secondly, so, then, thus, as to, in contrast, as a result, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 10.4613686534 124% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 5.04856512141 158% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 7.30242825607 96% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 12.0772626932 116% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 22.412803532 103% => OK
Preposition: 37.0 30.3222958057 122% => OK
Nominalization: 6.0 5.01324503311 120% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1627.0 1373.03311258 118% => OK
No of words: 316.0 270.72406181 117% => OK
Chars per words: 5.14873417722 5.08290768461 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.21620550194 4.04702891845 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.60346699194 2.5805825403 101% => OK
Unique words: 193.0 145.348785872 133% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.610759493671 0.540411800872 113% => OK
syllable_count: 473.4 419.366225166 113% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.55342163355 97% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 3.25607064018 123% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.23620309051 121% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 1.25165562914 80% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.51434878587 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 2.5761589404 155% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 13.0662251656 115% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 21.2450331126 99% => OK
Sentence length SD: 41.5481514497 49.2860985944 84% => OK
Chars per sentence: 108.466666667 110.228320801 98% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.0666666667 21.698381199 97% => OK
Discourse Markers: 9.46666666667 7.06452816374 134% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 4.19205298013 24% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 4.33554083885 161% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 4.45695364238 90% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.27373068433 94% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.12452081646 0.272083759551 46% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0381288275095 0.0996497079465 38% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0749055857446 0.0662205650399 113% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0767078833257 0.162205337803 47% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0709227294891 0.0443174109184 160% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.4 13.3589403974 100% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 53.8541721854 109% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 5.55761589404 56% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 11.0289183223 93% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.59 12.2367328918 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.73 8.42419426049 104% => OK
difficult_words: 81.0 63.6247240618 127% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 10.7273730684 75% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 10.498013245 99% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.2008830022 116% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 85.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 25.5 Out of 30
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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.