You have three minutes to read the following passage and take notes.In many organizations, perhaps the best way to approach certain new projects is to assemble a group of people into a team. Having a team of people attack a project offers several advantages. First of all, a group of people has a wider range of knowledge, expertise, and skills than any single individual is likely to possess. Also, because of the numbers of people involved and the greater resources they possess, a group can work more quickly in response to the task assigned to it and can come up with highly creative solutions to problems and issues. Sometimes these creative solutions come about because a group is more likely to make risky decisions that an individual might not undertake. This is because the group spreads responsibility for a decision to all the members and thus no single individual can be held accountable if the decision turns out to be wrong.
Taking part in a group process can be very rewarding for members of the team. Team members who have a voice in making a decision will no doubt feel better about carrying out the work that is entailed by that decision than they might doing work that is imposed on them by others. Also, the individual team member has a much better chance to “shine,” to get his or her contributions and ideas not only recognized but recognized as highly significant, because a team’s overall results can be more far-reaching and have greater impact than what might have otherwise been possible for the person to accomplish or contribute working alone.
Now listen to part of a lecture on the topic you just read about.
(Professor) Now I want to tell you about what one company found when it decided that it would turn over some of its new projects to teams of people, and make the team responsible for planning the projects and getting the work done. After about six months, the company took a look at how well the teams performed. On virtually every team, some members got almost a “free ride” … they didn’t contribute much at all, but if their team did a good job, they nevertheless benefited from the recognition the team got. And what about group members who worked especially well and who provided a lot of insight on problems and issues? Well…the recognition for a job well done went to the group as a whole, no names were named. So it won’t surprise you to learn that when the real contributors were asked how they felt about the group process, their attitude was just the opposite of what the reading predicts. Another finding was that some projects just didn’t move very quickly. Why? Because it took so long to reach consensus…it took many, many meetings to build the agreement among group members about how they would move the project along. On the other hand, there were other instances where one or two people managed to become very influential over what their group did. Sometimes when those influencers said “That will never work” about an idea the group was developing, the idea was quickly dropped instead of being further discussed. And then there was another occasion when a couple influencers convinced the group that a plan of theirs was “highly creative.” And even though some members tried to warn the rest of the group that the project was moving in directions that might not work, they were basically ignored by other group members. Can you guess the ending to *this* story? When the project failed, the blame was placed on all the members of the group.
Directions
You have 20 minutes to plan and write your response. Your response will be judged on the basis of the quality of your writing and on how well your response presents the points in the lecture and their relationship to the reading passage. Typically, an effective response will be 150 to 225 words.
The lecturer talks about research conducted by a firm that used the group system to handle their work. He says that the theory stated in the passage was very different and somewhat inaccurate when compared to what happened for real.
First, some members got free rides. That is, some didn’t work hard but got recognition for the success nonetheless. This also indicates that people who worked hard was not given recognition they should have got. In other words, they weren’t given the opportunity to “shine”. This directly contradicts what the passage indicates.
Second, groups were slow in progress. The passage says that groups are more responsive than individuals because of the number of people involved and their aggregated resources. However, the speaker talks about how the firm found out that groups were slower than individuals in decision making. Groups needed more time for meetings, which are necessary procedures in decision making. This was another part where experience contradicted theory.
Third, influential people might emerge, and lead the group towards glory or failure. If the in fluent people are going in the right direction there would be no problem. But in cases where they go in the wrong direction, there is nobody that has enough influence to counter the decision made. In other words, the group might turn into a dictatorship, with the influential party as the leader, and might be less flexible in thinking. They might become one-sided, and thus fail to succeed.
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 13, column 86, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...ead the group towards glory or failure. If the in fluent people are going in the r...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, nonetheless, second, so, third, thus, in other words
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 12.0 10.4613686534 115% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 5.04856512141 119% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 7.30242825607 110% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 12.0772626932 99% => OK
Pronoun: 17.0 22.412803532 76% => OK
Preposition: 24.0 30.3222958057 79% => OK
Nominalization: 6.0 5.01324503311 120% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1287.0 1373.03311258 94% => OK
No of words: 243.0 270.72406181 90% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.2962962963 5.08290768461 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 3.94822203886 4.04702891845 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.71408458675 2.5805825403 105% => OK
Unique words: 150.0 145.348785872 103% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.617283950617 0.540411800872 114% => OK
syllable_count: 379.8 419.366225166 91% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.55342163355 103% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 3.25607064018 215% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 4.0 8.23620309051 49% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 1.25165562914 80% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.51434878587 264% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 3.0 2.5761589404 116% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 13.0662251656 130% => OK
Sentence length: 14.0 21.2450331126 66% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 32.3373224331 49.2860985944 66% => OK
Chars per sentence: 75.7058823529 110.228320801 69% => OK
Words per sentence: 14.2941176471 21.698381199 66% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.88235294118 7.06452816374 69% => 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 : 6.0 4.45695364238 135% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.27373068433 94% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.100535092923 0.272083759551 37% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0310689357922 0.0996497079465 31% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0319676920158 0.0662205650399 48% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0543484534445 0.162205337803 34% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0158738401867 0.0443174109184 36% => 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: 10.7 13.3589403974 80% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 57.27 53.8541721854 106% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 5.55761589404 158% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 8.8 11.0289183223 80% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.87 12.2367328918 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.97 8.42419426049 95% => OK
difficult_words: 56.0 63.6247240618 88% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 6.5 10.7273730684 61% => OK
gunning_fog: 7.6 10.498013245 72% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.2008830022 80% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.3333333333 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 25.0 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.