A little over 2,200 years ago, the Roman navy attacked the Greek port city of Syracuse. According to some ancient historians, the Greeks defended themselves with an ingenious weapon called a “burning mirror”: a polished copper surface curved to focus the Sun’s rays onto Roman ships, causing them to catch fire. However, we have several reasons to suspect that the story of the burning mirror is just a myth and the Greeks of Syracuse never really built such a device.
The reading and the lecture are both about whether Greeks used burning mirrors when they attacked by Roman. While the author of the reading claims that it is not possible that Greeks used this technique, the lecturer challenges each reason stated in the reading.
To begin with, the writer argues that the ancient Greeks did not obtain advanced technology to create this device. In the article, it is mentioned that making a device like that requires producing a large sheet of copper, which needs a high manufacturing technology. The lecturer, however, rebuts this argument by stating that Greek might combine single sheets to have a large sheet of copper and did not need to use a specific technology to do so.
Secondly, the lecturer states that the experiment mentioned in the passage is not a convenience example to use. It is assumed that Roman's ships were entirely made of wood, but the fact is that there were other materials they used to build their boats. Moreover, the lecturer says that they used materials that are quicker than wood to burn. As a result, these materials would take only a few seconds to catch the fire, thus the fire will spread over all the boat.
Finally, the lecturer refutes the argument that the burning mirror is equal to flaming arrows used by Greeks. In fact, the Roman could predict that Greek would use flaming arrows, but they are not familiar with the burning mirror. Therefore, the Greeks had a reason to create burning mirror and use it.
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 10, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...fic technology to do so. Secondly, the lecturer states that the experiment ...
^^
Line 9, column 119, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... not a convenience example to use. It is assumed that Romans ships were entirely ...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, however, if, moreover, second, secondly, so, therefore, thus, while, in fact, as a result, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 11.0 10.4613686534 105% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 5.04856512141 119% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 7.30242825607 68% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 12.0772626932 124% => OK
Pronoun: 26.0 22.412803532 116% => OK
Preposition: 27.0 30.3222958057 89% => OK
Nominalization: 4.0 5.01324503311 80% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1241.0 1373.03311258 90% => OK
No of words: 256.0 270.72406181 95% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.84765625 5.08290768461 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.0 4.04702891845 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.32371318031 2.5805825403 90% => OK
Unique words: 143.0 145.348785872 98% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.55859375 0.540411800872 103% => OK
syllable_count: 378.0 419.366225166 90% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.55342163355 97% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 3.25607064018 92% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.23620309051 109% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 1.25165562914 160% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.51434878587 132% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 2.5761589404 116% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 12.0 13.0662251656 92% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 21.2450331126 99% => OK
Sentence length SD: 28.8486231137 49.2860985944 59% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 103.416666667 110.228320801 94% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.3333333333 21.698381199 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 9.83333333333 7.06452816374 139% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 4.19205298013 48% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 4.33554083885 69% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 4.45695364238 112% => 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: 0.151325507879 0.272083759551 56% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0656702982997 0.0996497079465 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0541704304531 0.0662205650399 82% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.100022072645 0.162205337803 62% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0478798380719 0.0443174109184 108% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.1 13.3589403974 91% => Automated_readability_index is low.
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: 10.85 12.2367328918 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.26 8.42419426049 98% => OK
difficult_words: 58.0 63.6247240618 91% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 10.7273730684 98% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 10.498013245 99% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.2008830022 98% => 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.