In the United States, employees typically work five days a week for eight hours each day. However, many employees want to work a four-day week and are willing to accept less pay in order to do so. A mandatory policy requiring companies to offer their employees the option of working a four-day workweek for four-fifths (80 percent) of their normal pay would benefit the economy as a whole as well as the individual companies and the employees who decided to take the option.
The shortened workweek would increase company profits because employees would feel more rested and alert, and as a result, they would make fewer costly errors in their work. Hiring more staff to ensure that the same amount of work would be accomplished would not result in additional payroll costs because four-day employees would only be paid 80 percent of the normal rate. In the end, companies would have fewer overworked and error-prone employees for the same money, which would increase company benefits.
For the country as a whole, one of the primary benefits of offering this option to employees is that it would reduce unemployment rate. If many full-time employees started working fewer hours, some of their workload would have to be shifted to others. Thus, for every four employees who went on an 80 percent week, a new employee could be hired at the 80 percent rate.
Finally, the option of a four-day workweek would be better for individual employees. Employees who could afford a lower salary in exchange for more free time could improve the quality of their lives by spending the extra time with their families, pursuing private interests or enjoying leisure activities.
Questions:
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?
In the passage, the author argues that a 4 workday per week with 80% of the normal pay will benefit the economy, the company and the individuals making that decision and cites reasons in support of her argument. However, the speaker contradicts with the conclusion that the author presents and provides the reasoning. It has been summarized in the following paragraphs.
First, the author states that shortened workweek will benefit the workers because due to enjoying more free time, they will be less prone to error. That is why at the end of the week they will be less overworked and this will ultimately benefit the whole organization. However, the speaker says that shortened workweek will lead to hiring more workers to satisfy the total load. This will have additional costs such as training them, accumulating more space, setting up new computers etc. As a result, the cost for hiring employees will in turn cut the profit of the company.
Secondly, the author posits that, shortening the work time will give opportunities to hire new employees because more workers are needed that will reduce the overall unemployment rate. But the author argues again that hiring new employees will just add to the company costings. The author further states that if the company falls short of its workload, then it can just ask the existing workers to do overtime. He states that the expense would just go up when the job that can be done by 4 people are instead being done by 5 people.
Third, the author assumes that for the extra time that they workers might get off work, they can use in spending time with their families or pursuing self-interests etc. However, the speaker contradicts with the statement saying that this will decrease the workers’ stability and it will limit his career growth. He might lose his competitive edge when competing for promotions because then he might be passed over in consideration when there are people who work 5 days per week.
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, second, secondly, so, then, third, such as, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 10.0 10.4613686534 96% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 5.04856512141 396% => Less auxiliary verb wanted.
Conjunction : 7.0 7.30242825607 96% => OK
Relative clauses : 19.0 12.0772626932 157% => OK
Pronoun: 34.0 22.412803532 152% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 29.0 30.3222958057 96% => OK
Nominalization: 5.0 5.01324503311 100% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1651.0 1373.03311258 120% => OK
No of words: 334.0 270.72406181 123% => OK
Chars per words: 4.94311377246 5.08290768461 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.27500489853 4.04702891845 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.56134881011 2.5805825403 99% => OK
Unique words: 176.0 145.348785872 121% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.526946107784 0.540411800872 98% => OK
syllable_count: 489.6 419.366225166 117% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.55342163355 97% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 3.25607064018 215% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 10.0 8.23620309051 121% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 1.25165562914 80% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.51434878587 66% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 2.5761589404 39% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 13.0662251656 115% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 21.2450331126 104% => OK
Sentence length SD: 40.1538153715 49.2860985944 81% => OK
Chars per sentence: 110.066666667 110.228320801 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.2666666667 21.698381199 103% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.33333333333 7.06452816374 75% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 4.19205298013 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 4.33554083885 138% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 4.45695364238 90% => 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: 0.178204554397 0.272083759551 65% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0603428097342 0.0996497079465 61% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.038636167999 0.0662205650399 58% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.105588550236 0.162205337803 65% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0218199778182 0.0443174109184 49% => 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: 13.0 13.3589403974 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 57.61 53.8541721854 107% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 5.55761589404 158% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 11.0289183223 97% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.67 12.2367328918 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.04 8.42419426049 95% => OK
difficult_words: 70.0 63.6247240618 110% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 10.7273730684 103% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 10.498013245 103% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.2008830022 98% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 20 minutes.
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.