TPO-48 - In recent years, many frog species around the world have declined in numbers or even gone extinct due to changes in their environment. These population declines and extinctions have serious consequences for the ecosystems in which frogs live; for example, frogs help play a role in protecting humans by eating disease-carrying insects. Several methods have been proposed to solve the problem of declining frog populations.
First, frogs are being harmed by pesticides, which are chemicals used to prevent insects from damaging farm crops such as corn and sugarcane. Pesticides often spread from farmland into neighboring frog habitats. Once pesticides enter a frog’s body, they attack the nervous system, leading to severe breathing problems. If laws prohibited the farmers from using harmful pesticides near sensitive frog populations, it would significantly reduce the harm pesticides cause to frogs.
A second major factor in frog population decline is a fungus that has spread around the world with deadly effect. The fungus causes thickening of the skin, and since frogs use their skin to absorb water, infected frogs die of dehydration. Recently, researchers have discovered several ways to treat or prevent infection, including antifungal medication and treatments that kill the fungus with heat. Those treatments, if applied on a large scale, would protect sensitive frog populations from infection.
Third, in a great many cases, frog populations are in decline simply because their natural habitats are threatened. Since most frog species lay their eggs in water, they are dependent on water and wetland habitats. Many such habitats are threatened by human activities, including excessive water use or the draining of wetlands to make them suitable for development. If key water habitats such as lakes and marshes were better protected from excessive water use and development, many frog species would recover.
The passage considers three different approaches to resolve the issue of frogs declining numbers, however, the lecturer calls the solutions unefficient pointing out that none of the methods are practical.
The first problem pointed by the author is the effects of pesticides on frog species and the solution given is for the government to prohibit the use of pesticides in areas with frog populations. The lecturer, argues against this pointing out that by doing prohibiting the usage of pesticides the farmers in such areas will have a harder time in raising their crops and will have less yields than their competitors in other areas not affected by this type of regulations. Hence, this action is unfair and economically disadvantageous to farmers in such areas.
The second solution given by the author is to treat the fungus affecting frogs . The treatment for this disease has to be done on each frog individually which makes it a very unpractical and hard endeavor. Concurrently the frogs may pass this disease onto their offsprings leading to the treatment being needed again and again.
In the third solution the protection of frogs habitats which includes wetlands is taken into consideration and the author points towards human activities as the reason for this problem and calls for the developments near frog habitats to stop. Nonetheless, the lecturer disagrees with this point and explains that global warming is the main reason for the disappearance of wetlands and stopping human developments near such areas wouldn't have much of an impact.
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 25 in 30
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 9 12
No. of Words: 253 250
No. of Characters: 1288 1200
No. of Different Words: 137 150
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 3.988 4.2
Average Word Length: 5.091 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.775 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 86 80
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 69 60
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 50 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 32 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 28.111 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.1 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.778 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.388 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.388 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.075 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 4