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.
Now listen to part of a lecture on the topic you just read about.
It would be great if we could stop the lake salt level from increasing and save its fish and bird populations. But the solutions you just read about aren't realistic or practical.
First, sure, taking salt out of the lake by desalination would reduce salinity, but it would present some serious problems as well. For example, as you've read, water pumped into desalination facilities evaporates and leaves behind solid materials that would dissolve in the water. Well, the solid materials that desalination facilities leave behind would pose a health risk. The materials will be mostly salt, but they would also include other types of chemicals. Some of the chemicals would be toxic, like selenium. If the wind spread selenium and other chemicals into the air and people breathe them in, that would be very dangerous to people's health.
Second, the idea of bringing ocean water into the lake, again, this would reduce salinity. But as you've read, it would require constructing pipelines or canals. The problem is that the local government may not have enough resources to pay for such major construction. The nearest shoreline of the Pacific Ocean is 100 kilometers away. Pipelines and canals are very expensive to build over such long distances.
As for the third solution, dividing the lake into sections by building a system of walls. Well, that's unlikely to work for very long. That's because the Salton Seas is located in a region that experiences frequent and sometimes intense geological activity, like earthquakes. That activity would almost certainly destroy the walls separating the different sections. So while this solution might work for a short while, the walls would likely collapse the first time there is a major earthquake. And water from the special sections with high salinity would mix back in with the low-salinity salinity from the main section.
In this set of materials, the reading passage and the lecture discuss how to decrease the salinity of the lake's water. The reading passage offers three possible solutions to deal with this problem. However, the professor concludes that these methods are not realistic at all.
First of all, the reading passage points out that some special desalination facilities may have some positive impacts on this situation. Nevertheless, the professor claims that there are some toxic materials in the water. If you heat the water, and the wind may blow these toxic materials to into the air. And it may have health risk when people breathe toxic air, which is really dangerous.
Secondly, the reading article argues that they can just build several pipelines and canals to deliver ocean water to the lake. While the professor suggests that the government may not have enough money and resources to construct these pipelines. Since the ocean is not near to this place, it may cost much money to build pipelines.
Thirdly, the reading material believes that building walls to divide the lake into several sections is a good solution. However, the professor thinks that it is only a temporary plan. Due to some frequent geological activities like earthquakes, these walls cannot last for a long time. If an earthquake ocurrs, the walls will collapse at last.
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, however, if, may, nevertheless, really, second, secondly, so, third, thirdly, while, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 6.0 10.4613686534 57% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 5.04856512141 158% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 7.30242825607 68% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 12.0772626932 75% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 20.0 22.412803532 89% => OK
Preposition: 24.0 30.3222958057 79% => OK
Nominalization: 4.0 5.01324503311 80% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1133.0 1373.03311258 83% => OK
No of words: 223.0 270.72406181 82% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.08071748879 5.08290768461 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 3.86434787811 4.04702891845 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.50007942925 2.5805825403 97% => OK
Unique words: 132.0 145.348785872 91% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.591928251121 0.540411800872 110% => OK
syllable_count: 347.4 419.366225166 83% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.55342163355 103% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 3.25607064018 61% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.23620309051 109% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 1.25165562914 320% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.51434878587 132% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 2.5761589404 78% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 13.0662251656 107% => OK
Sentence length: 15.0 21.2450331126 71% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 23.6914692302 49.2860985944 48% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 80.9285714286 110.228320801 73% => OK
Words per sentence: 15.9285714286 21.698381199 73% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.42857142857 7.06452816374 105% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 4.19205298013 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 4.33554083885 69% => 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: 0.0950760141547 0.272083759551 35% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0344010724032 0.0996497079465 35% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0495962078524 0.0662205650399 75% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0596137088743 0.162205337803 37% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0188050961519 0.0443174109184 42% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 10.5 13.3589403974 79% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 56.25 53.8541721854 104% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 5.55761589404 56% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.1 11.0289183223 83% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.89 12.2367328918 97% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.99 8.42419426049 95% => OK
difficult_words: 51.0 63.6247240618 80% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 6.5 10.7273730684 61% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.0 10.498013245 76% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.2008830022 71% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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It is not exactly right on the topic in the view of e-grader. Maybe there is a wrong essay topic.
Rates: 3.33333333333 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 1.0 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.