The Salton Sea in California is actually a salty inland lake The level of salt in the lake s water what scientists call its salinity has been increasing steadily for years because the lake s water is evaporating faster than it is being replaced by rainfal

Essay topics:

The Salton Sea in California is actually a salty inland lake. The level of salt in the lake's water—what scientists call its salinity—has been increasing steadily for years because the lake's water is evaporating faster than it is being replaced by rainfall or rivers. If the trend continues, the lake's water will soon become so salty that the lake will be unable to support fish and bird populations. The lake would then become essentially a dead zone. Fortunately, there are several ways to reverse the trend that is threatening the lake's health.
One option is direct removal of salt from the lake's water in special desalination facilities. Water from the lake would be pumped into the facilities and heated. This would cause the water to evaporate into steam, while salt and other materials dissolved in the water would be left behind. The steam would then be cooled down and returned to the lake as salt-free water. Gradually, the high salt levels would be reduced and the lake’s overall health would be restored.
Another possible solution is to dilute the salt level in the lake with water from the ocean. Since water in the Pacific Ocean is 20 percent less salty than water in the lake, bringing ocean water into the lake would decrease the lake’s salinity. The ocean water could be delivered through pipelines or canals.
Yet another solution would be to control the lake's salinity by constructing walls to divide the lake into several sections. In the smaller sections, salinity would be allowed to increase. However, in the main and largest section, salinity would be reduced and controlled by, among other things, directing all the freshwater from small rivers in the area to flow into that main section of the lake.

Both the article and the lecture talk about the increasing salnity of the Salton Lake in California and the possible solutions. It is obvious that they have completely different ideas on all three points.

First, according to the writer, salt can be removed from the lake by a special desalination facillity. However, the lecturer disagrees with the author on this point. To her understanding, this can pose a potential threat to human health, since the solid extracted from the lake contains some toxic substances, which will harm people's health if spread by wind. Thus, she is convicted that the writer's view is unreliable.

In addition, from the perspective of the author, the lake can be diluted by building pipelines from the ocean. Again, the lecturer cast doubt on this view by refuting that the expenses will be extremely high to build pipelines since it is 100 kilometers from the nearest ocean coastline and that the local government cannot afford to do so. Hence, she firmly maintains that the explanation of the writer is unacceptable.

Apart from what has been mentioned above, there is another point that the writing and listening passage contradict each other. The writer believes that it can also work to construct walls inside the lake to segerate the lakes into several sections. This idea displeases the lecturer, who argues that walls will not last very long due to geological activities. The walls would be destroyed just by one time of earthquake, which is very common in that area. Hence, the writer's theory is unbelievable.

To sum up, the writer and the speaker differ in their understanding of the same phenomenon they discuss.

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Essay Categories

Integrated TOEFL Writing

Comments

Essay evaluations by e-grader

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 468, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'writers'' or 'writer's'?
Suggestion: writers'; writer's
...is very common in that area. Hence, the writers theory is unbelievable. To sum up, t...
^^^^^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, hence, however, if, so, thus, apart from, in addition, to sum up

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

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 10.4613686534 124% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 5.04856512141 178% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 7.30242825607 68% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 12.0772626932 99% => OK
Pronoun: 22.0 22.412803532 98% => OK
Preposition: 40.0 30.3222958057 132% => OK
Nominalization: 4.0 5.01324503311 80% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1393.0 1373.03311258 101% => OK
No of words: 275.0 270.72406181 102% => OK
Chars per words: 5.06545454545 5.08290768461 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.07223819929 4.04702891845 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.69275121222 2.5805825403 104% => OK
Unique words: 167.0 145.348785872 115% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.607272727273 0.540411800872 112% => OK
syllable_count: 420.3 419.366225166 100% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.55342163355 97% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 3.25607064018 154% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.23620309051 85% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 1.25165562914 80% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.51434878587 0% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 2.5761589404 272% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 13.0662251656 115% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 21.2450331126 85% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 47.3793203835 49.2860985944 96% => OK
Chars per sentence: 92.8666666667 110.228320801 84% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.3333333333 21.698381199 84% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.13333333333 7.06452816374 73% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 4.09492273731 122% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 4.19205298013 24% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 4.33554083885 69% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 4.45695364238 157% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.27373068433 117% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.141933166861 0.272083759551 52% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0454181801614 0.0996497079465 46% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0584018388387 0.0662205650399 88% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0743958162377 0.162205337803 46% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0425920598671 0.0443174109184 96% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.6 13.3589403974 87% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 61.67 53.8541721854 115% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 5.55761589404 158% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.1 11.0289183223 83% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.13 12.2367328918 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.01 8.42419426049 107% => OK
difficult_words: 78.0 63.6247240618 123% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 10.7273730684 75% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 10.498013245 88% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.2008830022 80% => OK
What are above readability scores?

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Rates: 88.3333333333 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 26.5 Out of 30
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Essay evaluations by e-grader

Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, hence, however, if, so, thus, apart from, in addition, to sum up

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

Comments

Essay evaluations by e-grader

Essay evaluations by e-grader

ok