The sea otter is a small mammal that lives in waters along the western coast of North America from California to Alaska. When some sea otter populations off the Alaskan coast started rapidly declining a few years ago, it caused much concern because sea ot | TOEFL IELTS GMAT GRE SAT ACT PTE ESL

Essay topics:

The sea otter is a small mammal that lives in waters along the western coast of North America from California to Alaska. When some sea otter populations off the Alaskan coast started rapidly declining a few years ago, it caused much concern because sea otters play an important ecological role in the coastal ecosystem. Experts started investigating the cause of the decline and quickly realized that there were two possible explanations: environmental pollution or attacks by predators. Initially, the pollution hypothesis seemed the more likely of the two.
The first reason why pollution seemed the more likely cause was that there were known sources of it along the Alaskan coast, such as oil rigs and other sources of industrial chemical pollution. Water samples from the area revealed increased levels of chemicals that could decrease the otters' resistance to life-threatening infections and thus could indirectly cause their deaths.
Second, other sea mammals such as seals and sea lions along the Alaskan coast were also declining, indicating that whatever had endangered the otters was affecting other sea mammals as well. This fact again pointed to environmental pollution, since it usually affects the entire ecosystem rather than a single species. Only widely occurring predators, such as the orca (a large predatory whale), could have the same effect, but orcas prefer to hunt much larger prey, such as other whales.
Third, scientists believed that the pollution hypothesis could also explain the uneven pattern of otter decline: at some Alaskan locations the otter populations declined greatly, while at others they remained stable. Some experts explained these observations by suggesting that ocean currents or other environmental factors may have created uneven concentrations of pollutants along the coast.

The lecture holds an opposite point of view to that of the reading passage on the topic of why the sea otter population declined off the Alaskan coast. According to the reading passage, the rapid decline in the sea otter was because of the polluted water in the area. However, the lecture points out that it's most likely due to predators.

First, the reading passage states that pollutants are the reason behind the decline especially that there are many sources of pollutants in the area like oil rigs and other industrial and chemical pollutants. On the other hand, the lecture illustrates that although analysis revealed increased levels of chemicals in the area, this should not prove the pollution theory because if sea otters were killed by infections, their bodies would have washed up to the shore. Given that no washed-up sea otter bodies were found, we can conclude that it must be predators not something else.

Second, the reading passage claims that if we consider that other sea mammals are declining too, we can say with confidence that it's pollution because only pollution that could have an effect on the entire ecosystem, given that Orca whales, which could have a similar effect by predation, usually hunt larger prey like whales not small mammals like sea otter. The lecture refutes these claims mentioning that due to the fact that whales populations started to disappear in the area because of human hunters leading orcas to search for alternative diet in small mammals like sea otter, sea lion and others and this led to the decline in the population of all these mammals.

Lastly, the lecture challenges the reading passage in explaining why sea otter population is declining faster in some areas while the population is relatively stable in other areas. The reading passage argues that that happened because of uneven distribution of pollutants which are at high levels in some areas and at lower levels in other areas. In contrast, the professor in the lecture believes that it is because the nature of the location and how accessible it is to Orcas. The locations which are easily accessible to the orcas will not be safe for sea otters because they are going to be easy prey for the Orcas. However, shallow and rocky locations which are not accessible to Orcas will have larger number of population of sea otter.

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Essay Categories

Integrated TOEFL Writing

Comments

Essay evaluations by e-grader

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 217, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a word
Suggestion: that
...reas. The reading passage argues that that ^^^^^^^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, lastly, second, so, while, as to, in contrast, on the other hand

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

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 10.4613686534 163% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 5.04856512141 178% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 7.30242825607 96% => OK
Relative clauses : 21.0 12.0772626932 174% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 22.412803532 138% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 57.0 30.3222958057 188% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 5.01324503311 239% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2692.0 1373.03311258 196% => OK
No of words: 427.0 270.72406181 158% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 6.30444964871 5.08290768461 124% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.54576487731 4.04702891845 112% => OK
Word Length SD: 4.85175819811 2.5805825403 188% => OK
Unique words: 200.0 145.348785872 138% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.468384074941 0.540411800872 87% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 762.3 419.366225166 182% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.55342163355 116% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 3.25607064018 123% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.23620309051 121% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 1.25165562914 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.51434878587 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 2.5761589404 116% => OK

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 13.0 13.0662251656 99% => OK
Sentence length: 32.0 21.2450331126 151% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 125.334015274 49.2860985944 254% => The lengths of sentences changed so frequently.
Chars per sentence: 207.076923077 110.228320801 188% => OK
Words per sentence: 32.8461538462 21.698381199 151% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.84615384615 7.06452816374 97% => 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 : 3.0 4.45695364238 67% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.27373068433 70% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.128273572455 0.272083759551 47% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0877175634088 0.0996497079465 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0713543259958 0.0662205650399 108% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.117779228595 0.162205337803 73% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0455558287512 0.0443174109184 103% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 24.7 13.3589403974 185% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 22.08 53.8541721854 41% => Flesch_reading_ease is low.
smog_index: 11.2 5.55761589404 202% => Smog_index is high.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 18.1 11.0289183223 164% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 19.85 12.2367328918 162% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.37 8.42419426049 111% => OK
difficult_words: 112.0 63.6247240618 176% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 10.7273730684 126% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.8 10.498013245 141% => OK
text_standard: 25.0 11.2008830022 223% => The average readability is very high. Good job!
What are above readability scores?

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Rates: 73.3333333333 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 22.0 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.