Dowsing is the millennia-old practice of finding hidden things. The most well-known activity of dowsing involves the use of a device such as a forked stick to locate underground water. To this end, the dowser walks slowly back and forth over an area of gr

The reading and the lecture are both about dowsing. The author of the reading provides several explanations to prove the benefits of dowsing. The lecturer challenges the claims made by the author. She feels that the author's explanations are faulty.

To begin with, the author argues that a dowser holding a dowsing tool in his hand, is able to feel the energy of flowing underground water through the vibrations in the rod. In the article, it is mentioned that the dowser is able to determine the area which should be dug up in order to find water. This specific argument is challenged by the lecturer. She feels that such claims are against the laws of physics and unknown to science. Moreover, she also mentions that such extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence, which is absent in dowsing.

Secondly, the writer mentions that dowsing has also found popularity in finding hidden objects such as buried treasure or dead bodies. The lecturer, however, rebuts the claims by stating that scientists, who are able to detect radio signals from outer space, have not found an efficient way of detecting hidden objects, and hence, the chances of a dowser being right is the same as a person having a hunch about something.

Finally, the author posits that many large corporations and organizations have paid dowsers for their detection skills. Furthermore, the article also states that dowsing has been used to find harmful energy fields in an effort to avoid such areas. In contrast, the lecturer feels that dowsing is hypothetical and not practically proven. He goes on to say that an experiment, which was performed to test the validity of dowsing, proved that dowsing doesn't work effectively and dowsers sometimes succeed only due to pure luck.

Votes
Average: 8 (1 vote)
Essay Categories

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 143, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...tions to prove the benefits of dowsing. The lecturer challenges the claims made by ...
^^^
Line 7, column 449, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...alidity of dowsing, proved that dowsing doesnt work effectively and dowsers sometimes ...
^^^^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, furthermore, hence, however, if, moreover, second, secondly, so, in contrast, such as, to begin with

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 10.4613686534 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 1.0 5.04856512141 20% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 7.30242825607 96% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 12.0772626932 132% => OK
Pronoun: 20.0 22.412803532 89% => OK
Preposition: 38.0 30.3222958057 125% => OK
Nominalization: 5.0 5.01324503311 100% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1476.0 1373.03311258 107% => OK
No of words: 291.0 270.72406181 107% => OK
Chars per words: 5.07216494845 5.08290768461 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.13022058845 4.04702891845 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.65601283424 2.5805825403 103% => OK
Unique words: 167.0 145.348785872 115% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.573883161512 0.540411800872 106% => OK
syllable_count: 444.6 419.366225166 106% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.55342163355 97% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 3.25607064018 184% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.23620309051 121% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 1.25165562914 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.51434878587 66% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 2.5761589404 116% => OK

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 13.0662251656 115% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 21.2450331126 89% => OK
Sentence length SD: 61.6385882022 49.2860985944 125% => OK
Chars per sentence: 98.4 110.228320801 89% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.4 21.698381199 89% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.0 7.06452816374 113% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 4.19205298013 48% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 4.33554083885 92% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 4.45695364238 90% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.27373068433 164% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.181788624073 0.272083759551 67% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0562012742623 0.0996497079465 56% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0505826013992 0.0662205650399 76% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.102078117652 0.162205337803 63% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0634609922119 0.0443174109184 143% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.1 13.3589403974 91% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 60.65 53.8541721854 113% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 5.55761589404 56% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.5 11.0289183223 86% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.13 12.2367328918 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.76 8.42419426049 104% => OK
difficult_words: 77.0 63.6247240618 121% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 6.5 10.7273730684 61% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 10.498013245 91% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.2008830022 89% => OK
What are above readability scores?

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Rates: 80.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 24.0 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.